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MY DISCOVERY OF ENGLAND 



BY STEPHEN LEACOCK 

WINSOME WINNIE 
FRENZIED FICTION 

FURTHER FOOLISHNESS 

BEHIND THE BEYOND 

NONSENSE NOVELS 

LITERARY LAPSES 

SUNSHINE SKETCHES 

ARCADIAN ADVENTURES 

WITH THE IDLE RICH 

MOONBEAMS FROM THE 
LARGER LUNACY 

THE HOHENZOLLERNS 
IN AMERICA 

THE UNSOLVED RIDDLE 
OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 

ESSAYS AND LITERARY 
STUDIES 



MY DISCOVERY 
OF ENGLAND 

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK 




NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1922 



'•^ 



D ' ^\^ 






COPYEIGHT, 1922, 

By dodd, mead and company, Inc. 




k\ 




7 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 

tg bc CButim & 3Bol)tn Companp 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 



JL'N 20 1922 

A674656 



Introduction of Mr. Stephen Lea- 
cock Given by Sir Owen Seaman 
on the Occasion of His First Lee- 
ture in London 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

It Is usual on these occasions for the chair- 
man to begin something like this : "The lecturer, 
I am sure, needs no Introduction from mey 
And indeed, when I have been the lecturer and 
somebody else has been the chairman, I have 
more than once suspected myself of being the 
better man of the two. | Of course I hope I 
should always have the good manners — I am 
sure Mr. Leacock has — to disguise that sus- 
picion. However, one has to go through these 
formalities, and I will therefore Introduce the 
lecturer to you. 

Ladles and gentlemen, this Is Mr. Stephen 
Leacock. Mr. Leacock, this Is the flower of 
London Intelligence — or perhaps I should say 

V 



Introduction 



one of the flowers; the rest are coming to 
your other lectures. 

In ordinary social life one stops at an intro- 
duction and does not proceed to personal de- 
tails. But behaviour on the platform, as on 
the stage, is seldom ordinary. I will there- 
fore tell you a thing or two about Mr. Leacock. 
In the first place, by vocation he is a Professor 
of Political Economy, and he practises humour 
* — frenzied fiction instead of frenzied finance — 
by way of recreation. There he differs a good 
deal from me, who have to study the products 
of humour for my living, and by way of recre- 
ation read Mr. Leacock on political economy. 

Further, Mr. Leacock is all-British, being 
English by birth and Canadian by residence. I 
mention this for two reasons: firstly, because 
England and. the Empire are very proud to 
claim him for their own, and, secondly, because 
I do not wish his nationality to be confused 
with that of his neighbours on the other side. 
For English and American humourists have not 
always seen eye to eye., When we fail to appre- 
ciate their humour they say we are too dull 

vi 



Introduction 



and effete to understand It: and when they do 
not appreciate ours they say we haven't got any. 

Now Mr. Leacock's humour is British by 
heredity; but he has caught something of the 
spirit of American humour by force of asso- 
ciation. This puts him in a similar position 
to that in which I found myself once when I 
took the liberty of swimming across a rather 
large loch in Scotland. After climbing into 
the boat I was in the act of drying myself 
when I was accosted by the proprietor of the 
hotel adjacent to the shore. "You have no 
business to be bathing here,'' he shouted. "I'm 
not," I said; "I'm bathing on the other side." 
In the same way. If anyone on either side of 
the water is unintelligent enough to criticise 
Mr. Leacock's humour, he can always say it 
comes from the other side. But the truth Is 
that his humour contains all that Is best In the 
humour of both hemispheres. 

Having fulfilled my duty as chairman. In that 
I have told you nothing that you did not know 
before — except, perhaps, my swimming feat, 
which never got Into the Press because I have 

vn 



Introduction 



a very bad publicity agent — I will not detain 
you longer from what you are really wanting 
to get at; but ask Mr. Leacock to proceed at 
once with his lecture on "Frenzied Fiction.** 



yiii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Balance of Trade in Impres- 
sions 3 

II. I Am Interviewed by the Press . 19 

III. Impressions of London ... 29 

IV. A Clear View of the Government 

AND Politics of England . . 51 

V. Oxford as I See It .... 79 

VI. The British and the American 

Press 119 

VII. Business in England . . . .153 

VIII. Is Prohibition Coming to England? 169 

IX. "We Have with Us To-night" . 191 

X, Have the English Any Sense of 

Humour? 223 



THE BALANCE OF TRADE IN 
IMPRESSIONS 



L—The Balance of Trade in 
Impressions 

FOR some years past a rising tide of lec- 
turers and literary men from England 
has washed upon the shores of our 
North American continent. The pur- 
pose of each one of them is to make a new dis- 
covery of America. They come over to us 
travelling in great simplicity, and they return 
in the ducal suite of the Aquitania. They 
carry away with them their impressions of 
America, and when they reach England they sell 
them. This export of impressions has now 
been going on so long that the balance of trade 
in impressions is all disturbed. There is no 
doubt that the Americans and Canadians have 
been too generous in this matter of giving 
away impressions. We emit them with the 
careless ease of a glow-worm, and like the 
glow-worm ask for nothing in return. 

3 



My Discovery of England 



But this Irregular and one-sided traffic has 
now assumed such great proportions that we 
are compelled to ask whether it is right to allow 
these people to carry away from us impressions 
of the very highest commercial value without 
giving us any pecuniary compensation what- 
ever. British lecturers have been known to 
land in New York, pass the customs, drive up- 
town in a closed taxi, and then forward to 
England from the closed taxi itself ten dollars' 
worth of impressions of American national 
character. I have myself seen an English lit- 
erary man, — the biggest, I believe: he had at 
least the appearance of it, — sit in the cor- 
ridor of a fashionable New York hotel and look 
gloomily into his hat, and then from his very 
hat produce an estimate of the genius of Amer- 
ica at twenty cents a word. The nice question 
as to whose twenty cents that was never seems 
to have occurred to him. 

I am not writing in the faintest spirit of 
jealousy. I quite admit the extraordinary 
ability that is involved in this peculiar suscepti- 
bility to impressions. I have e:5timated that 

4 



The Balance of Trade in Impressions 

some of these English visitors have been able 
to receive impressions at the rate of four to the 
second; in fact, they seem to get them every 
time they see twenty cents. But without jeal- 
ousy or complaint, I do feel that somehow these 
impressions are inadequate and fail to depict 
us as we really are. 

Let me illustrate what I mean. Here are 
some of the impressions of New York, gath- 
ered from visitors' discoveries of America and 
reproduced not perhaps word for word but as 
closely as I can remember them. "New York," 
writes one, "nestling at the foot of the Hud- 
son, gave me an impression of cosiness, of tiny 
graciousness : in short, of weeness." But com- 
pare this — "New York," according to another 
discoverer of America, "gave me an impression 
of size, of vastness; there seemed to be a big- 
ness about it not found in smaller places." A 
third visitor writes, "New York struck me as 
hard, cruel, almost inhuman." This, I think, 
was because his taxi driver had charged him 
three dollars. "The first thing that struck me 
in New York." writes another, "was the Statue 

5 



My Discovery of England 



of Liberty." But, after all, that was only 
natural: it was the first thing that could reach 
him. 

Nor is it only the impressions of the metrop- 
olis that seem to fall short of reality. Let me 
quote a few others taken at random here and 
there over the continent. 

"I took from Pittsburg,'' says an English 
visitor, "an impression of something that I 
could hardly define — ^an atmosphere rather 
than an idea." 

AH very well. But, after all, had he the 
right to take it? Granted that Pittsburg has 
an atmosphere rather than an idea, the attempt 
to carry away this atmosphere surely borders 
on rapacity. 

"New Orleans," writes another visitor, 
**opened her arms to me and bestowed upon me 
the soft and languorous kiss of the Caribbean." 
This statement may or may not be true : but in 
any case it hardly seems the fair thing to men- 
tion it. 

"Chicago," according to another book of dis- 
covery, "struck me as a large city. Situated as 

6 



The Balance of Trade in Impressions 

it is and where it is, it seems destined to be a 
place of importance." 

Or here, again, is a form of ''impression" 
that recurs again and again — "At Cleveland I 
felt a distinct note of optimism in the air." 

This same note of optimism is found also at 
Toledo, at Toronto — in short, I believe it in- 
dicates nothing more than that some one gave 
the visitor a cigar. Indeed it generally occurs 
during the familiar scene In which the visitor 
describes his cordial reception in an unsuspect- 
ing American town : thus : 

"I was met at the station (called In America 
the depot) by a member of the Municipal Coun- 
cil driving his own motor car. After giving 
me an excellent cigar, he proceeded to drive 
me about the town, to various points of inter- 
est, including the municipal abattoir, where he 
gave me another excellent cigar, the Carnegie 
public library, the First National Bank (the 
courteous manager of which gave me an excel- 
lent cigar) and the Second Congregational 
Church where I had the pleasure of meeting 
the pastor. The pastor, who appeared a 

7 



My Discovery of England 



man of breadth and culture, gave me another 
cigar. In the evening a dinner, admirably 
cooked and excellently served, was tendered to 
me at a leading hotel.'* And of course he took 
it. After which his statement that he carried 
away from the town a feeling of optimism 
explains itself: he had four cigars, the dinner, 
and half a page of impressions at twenty cents 
a word. 

Nor is it only by the theft of impressions 
that we suffer at the hands of these English 
discoverers of America. It is a part of the 
system also that we have to submit to being 
lectured to by our talented visitors. It is now 
quite understood that as soon as an English 
literary man finishes a book he is rushed across 
to America to tell the people of the United 
States and Canada all about it, and how he 
came to write it. At home, in his own country, 
they don't care how he came to write it. He's 
written it and that's enough. But in America 
it is different. One month after the distin- 
guished author's book on The Boyhood of BoU 
iiicelli has appeared in London, he is seen to 

8 



The Balance of Trade in Impressions 

land in New York very quietly out of one of 
the back portholes of the Olympic. That same 
afternoon you will find him in an armchair in 
one of the big hotels giving off impressions of 
America to a group of reporters. After which 
notices appear in all the papers to the effect 
that he will lecture in Carnegie Hall on Botti- 
celli the Boy. The audience is assured before- 
hand. It consists of all the people who feel 
that they have to go because they know all 
about Botticelli and all the people who feel 
that they have to go because they don't know 
anything about Botticelli. By this means the 
lecturer is able to rake the whole country from 
Montreal to San Francisco with Botticelli the 
Boy. Then he turns round, labels his lecture 
Botticelli the Man, and rakes it all back again. 
All the way across the continent and back he 
emits impressions, estimates of national char- 
acter, and surveys of American genius. He 
sails from New York in a blaze of publicity, 
with his cordon of reporters round him, and a 
month later publishes his book America as I 
Saw It. It is widely read — in America. 

9 



My Discovery of England 



In the course of time a very considerable 
public feeling was aroused in the United States 
and Canada over this state of affairs. The lack 
of reciprocity in it seemed unfair. It was felt 
(or at least I felt) that the time had come 
when some one ought to go over and take some 
impressions off England. The choice of such 
a person (my choice) fell upon myself. By 
an arrangement with the Geographical Society 
of America, acting in conjunction with the 
Royal Geographical Society of England (to 
both of whom I communicated my proposal) , I 
went at my own expense. 

It is scarcely feasible to give here full details 
In regard to my outfit and equipment, though 
I hope to do so in a later and more extended 
account of my expedition. Suffice it to say 
that my outfit, which was modelled on the equip- 
ment of English lecturers in America, included 
a complete suit of clothes, a dress shirt for lec- 
turing in, a fountain pen and a silk hat. The 
dress shirt, I may say for the benefit of other 
travellers, proved invaluable. The silk hat, 

10 



The Balance of Trade in Impressions 

however, Is no longer used In England except 
perhaps for scrambling eggs In. 

I pass over the details of my pleasant voyage 
from New York to Liverpool. During the 
last fifty years so many travellers have made 
the voyage across the Atlantic that It Is now 
Impossible to obtain any Impressions from the 
ocean of the slightest commercial value. My 
readers will recall the fact that Washington 
Irving, as far back as a century ago, chronicled 
the pleasure that one felt during an Atlantic 
voyage In Idle day dreams while lying prone 
upon the bowsprit and watching the dolphins 
leaping In the crystalline foam. Since his time 
so many gifted writers have attempted to do 
the same thing that on the large Atlantic liners 
the bowsprit has been removed, or at any rate 
a notice put up : "Authors are requested not to 
He prostrate on the bowsprit." But even with- 
out this advantage, three or four generations 
of writers have chronicled with great minute- 
ness their sensations during the transit. I need 
only say that my sensations were just as good 

II 



My Discovery of England 



as theirs. I will content myself with chron- 
icling the fact that during the voyage we passed 
two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg (none 
of them moving very fast at the time) , and that 
on the fourth day out the sea was so rough that 
the Captain said that in forty years he had 
never seen such weather. One of the steerage 
passengers, we were told, was actually washed 
overboard: I think it was over board that he 
ivas washed, but it may have been on board the 
ship itself. 

I pass over also the incidents of my landing 
In Liverpool, except perhaps to comment upon 
the extraordinary behaviour of the English cus- 
toms officials. Without wishing in any way to 
disturb international relations, one cannot help 
noticing the rough and inquisitorial methods of 
the English customs men as compared with the 
gentle and affectionate ways of the American 
officials at New York. The two trunks that 
I brought with me were dragged brutally into 
an open shed, the strap of one of them was 
rudely unbuckled, while the lid of the other 
was actually lifted at least four inches. The 

12 



The Balance of Trade in Impressions 

trunks were then roughly scrawled with chalk, 
the lids slammed to, and that was all. Not one 
of the officials seemed to care to look at my 
things or to have the politeness to pretend to 
want to. I had arranged my dress suit and 
my pyjamas so as to make as effective a display 
as possible : a New York customs officer would 
have been delighted with it. Here they simply 
passed it over. *'Do open this trunk," I asked 
one of the officials, **and see my pyjamas." *'I 
don't think it is necessary, sir," the man an- 
swered. There was a coldness about it that 
cut me to the quick. 

But bad as is the conduct of the English cus- 
toms men, the immigration officials are even 
worse. I could not help being struck by the 
dreadful carelessness with which people are ad- 
mitted into England. There are, it is true, a 
group of officials said to be in charge of immi- 
gration, but they know nothing of the discrim- 
inating care exercised on the other side of the 
Atlantic. 

"Do you want to know," I asked one of 
them, ^'whether I am a polygamist?" 

13 



My Discovery of England 



**No, sir," he said very quietly. 

* 'Would you like me to tell you whether I 
am fundamentally opposed to any and every 
system of government?" 

The man seemed mystified. "No, sir," he 
said. *'I don't know that I would." 

"Don't you care?" I asked. 

"Well, not particularly, sir," he answered. 

I was determined to arouse him from his 
lethargy. 

"Let me tell you, then," I said, "that I am 
an anarchistic polygamist, that I am opposed 
to all forms of government, that I object to any 
kind of revealed religion, that I regard the 
state and property and marriage as the mere 
tyranny of the bourgeoisie, and that I want to 
see class hatred carried to the point where it 
forces every one into brotherly love. Now, do 
I get in?" 

The official looked puzzled for a minute. 
"You are not Irish, are you, sir?" he said. 

"No." 

"Then I think you can come in all right," he 
answered. 

14 



The Balance of Trade in Impressions 

The journey from Liverpool to London, like 
all other English journeys, is short. This is 
due to the fact that England is a small country : 
it contains only 50,000 square miles, whereas 
the United States, as every one knows, contains 
three and a half billion. I mentioned this fact 
to an English fellow passenger on the train, 
together with a provisional estimate of the 
American corn crop for 1922 : but he only drew 
his rug about his knees, took a sip of brandy 
from his travelling flask, and sank into a state 
resembling death. I contented myself with 
jotting down an impression of incivility and 
paid no further attention to my fellow trav- 
eller other than to read the labels on his lug- 
gage and to peruse the headings of his news- 
paper by peeping over his shoulder. 

It was my first experience of travelling with 
a fellow passenger in a compartment of an 
English train, and I admit now that I was as 
yet ignorant of the proper method of conduct. 
Later on I became fully conversant with the 
rule of travel as understood in England. I 
should have known, of course, that I must on 

IS 



My Discovery of England 



no account speak to the man. But I should 
have let down the window a little bit in such a 
way as to make a strong draught on his ear. 
Had this failed to break down his reserve I 
should have placed a heavy valise in the rack 
over his head so balanced that it might fall on 
him at any moment. Failing this again, I 
could have blown rings of smoke at him or 
stepped on his feet under the pretence of look- 
ing out of the window. Under the English 
rule as long as he bears this in silence you are 
not supposed to know him. In fact, he is not 
supposed to be there. You and he each pre- 
sume the other to be a mere piece of empty 
space. But let him once be driven to say, 
"Oh, I beg your pardon, I wonder if you would 
mind my closing the window,** and he is lost. 
After that you are entitled to tell him anything 
about the corn crop that you care to. 

But in the present case I knew nothing of 
this, and after three hours of charming silence 
I found -myself in London. 



i6 



II 

I AM INTERVIEWED BY. THE 
PBESS 



^ 



//. — I am Interviewed by the Press 

IMMEDIATELY upon my arrival in 
London I was interviewed by the Press. 
I was interviewed in all twenty times. I 
am not saying this in any spirit of elation 
or boastfulness. I am simply stating it as a 
fact — interviewed twenty times, sixteen times 
by men and twice by women. But as I feel 
that the results of these interviews were not all 
that I could have wished, I think it well to 
make some public explanation of what hap- 
pened. 

The truth is that we do this thing so differ- 
ently over in America that I was for the time 
being completely thrown off my bearings. The 
questions that I had every right to expect after 
many years of American and Canadian inter- 
views failed to appear. 

19 



My Discovery of England 



I pass over the fact that being interviewed 
for five hours is a fatiguing process. I lay 
no claim to exemption for that. But to that 
no doubt was due the singular discrepancies as 
to my physical appearance which I detected In 
the London papers. 

The young man who interviewed me imme- 
diately after breakfast described me as "a brisk, 
energetic man, still on the right side of forty, 
with energy in every movement." 

The lady who wrote me up at 1 1.30 reported 
that my hair was turning grey, and that there 
was "a peculiar languor" in my manner. 

And at the end the boy who took me over at 
a quarter to two said, "The old gentleman sank 
wearily upon a chair in the hotel lounge. His 
hair is almost white." 

The trouble is that I had not understood that 
London reporters are supposed to look at a 
man's personal appearance. In America we 
never bother with that. We simply describe 
him as a **dynamo." For some reason or other 
It always pleases everybody to be called a "dy- 
namo," and the readers, at least with us, like 

20 



I am Interviewed by the Press 

to read about people who are "dynamos," and 
hardly care for anything else. 

In the case of very old men we sometimes 
call them **battle-horses" or "extinct volca- 
noes," but beyond these three classes we hardly 
venture on description. So I was misled. I 
had expected that the reporter would say: 
"As soon as Mr. Leacock came across the floor 
we felt we were in the presence of a ^dynamo' 
(or an *extinct battle-horse' as the case may 
be)." Otherwise I would have kept up those 
energetic movements all the morning. But 
they fatigue me, and I did not think them neces- 
sary. But I let that pass. 

The more serious trouble was the questions 
put to me by the reporters., Over in our chief 
centres of population we use another set al- 
together. I am thinking here especially of the 
kind of interview that I hav0 given out in 
Youngstown, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana, 
and Peterborough, Ontario. In all these 
places^ — for example, in Youngstown, Ohio — ? 
the reporter asks as his first question, "What is 
your impression of Youngstown?" 

21 



My Discovery of England 



In London they don't. They seem Indif- 
ferent to the fate of their city. Perhaps It is 
only English pride. For all I know they may 
have been burning to know this, just as the 
Youngstown, Ohio, people are, and were too 
proud to ask. In any case I will insert here 
the answer I had written out in my pocket-book 
(one copy for each paper — the way we do it in 
Youngstown), and which read: 

*'London strikes me as emphatically a city 
with a future. Standing as she does in the 
heart of a rich agricultural district with rail- 
road connection In all directions, and resting, 
as she must, on a bed of coal and oil, I prophesy 
that she will one day be a great city." 

The advantage of this Is that it enables the 
reporter to get just the right kind of heading: 
Prophesies Bright Future for London.; 
Had that been used my name would have stood 
higher there than it does to-day — unless the 
London people are very different from the peo- 
ple in Youngstown, which I doubt. As it is 
they don't know whether their future is bright 

22 



I am Interviewed by the Press 

or IS as dark as mud. But it's not my fault. 
The reporters never asked mc 

If the first question had been handled prop- 
erly it would have led up by an easy and pleas- 
ant transition to question two, which always 
runs: "Have you seen our factories?" To 
which the answer is : 

*'I have. I was taken out early this morn- 
ing by a group of your citizens (whom I can- 
not thank enough) in a Ford car to look at 
your pail and bucket works. At eleven-thirty 
I was taken out by a second group in what was 
apparently the same car to see your soap works. 
I understand that you are the second nail-mak- 
ing centre east of the Alleghenies, and I am 
amazed and appalled. This afternoon I am 
to be taken out to see your wonderful system of 
disposing of sewerage, a thing which has fas- 
cinated me from childhood." 

Now I am not offering any criticism of the 
London system of interviewing, but one sees 
at once how easy and friendly for all concerned 
this Youngstown method is; how much better 

23 



My Discovery of England 



it works than the London method of asking 
questions about literature and art and difficult 
things of that sort. I am sure that there must 
be soap works and perhaps a pail factory some- 
where in London. But during my entire time 
of residence there no one ever offered to take 
me to them. As for the sewerage — -oh, well, 
I suppose we are more hospitable in America. 
Let it go at that. 

I had my answer all written and ready, say- 
ing: 

"I understand that London is the second 
greatest hop-consuming, the fourth hog-killing, 
and the first egg-absorbing centre in the world.** 

But what I deplore still more, and I think 
with reason, is the total omission of the famil- 
iar interrogation: *What is your impression of 
our women?" 

That's where the reporter over on our 
side hits the nail every time. That is the point 
at which we always nudge him in the ribs and 
buy him a cigar, and at which youth and age 
join m a sly jest together. Here again the 

24 



I am Interviewed by the Press 

sub-heading comes in so nicely: Thinks 
YouNGSTOWN Women Charming^ And they 
are. They are, everywhere. But I hate to 
think that I had to keep my impression of Lon- 
don women unused in my pocket while a young 
man asked me whether I thought modern litera- 
ture owed more to observation and less to in- 
spiration than some other kind of literature. 

Now that's exactly the kind of question, the; 
last one, that the London reporters seem to 
harp on. They seemed hipped about litera- 
ture; and their questions are too difficult. One 
asked me whether the American drama was 
structurally inferior to the French. I don't 
call that fair. I told him I didn't know; that 
I used to know the answer to it when I was at 
college, but that I had forgotten it, and that, 
anyway, I am too well off now to need to re- 
member it. 

That question is only one of a long list that 
they asked me about art and literature. I 
missed nearly all of them, except one as to 
jvhether I thought Al Jolson or Frank f inney 

25 



My Discovery of England 



was the higher artist, and even that one was 
asked by an American who is wasting himself 
on the London Press. 

I don't want to speak in anger. But I say 
it frankly, the atmosphere of these young men 
is not healthy, and I felt that I didn't want to 
see them any more. 

Had there been a reporter of the kind we 
have at home in Montreal or Toledo or Spring- 
field, Illinois, I would have welcomed him at 
my hotel. He could have taken me out in a 
Ford car and shown me a factory and told me 
how many cubic feet of water go down the 
Thames in an hour. I should have been glad 
of his society, and he and I would have to- 
gether made up the kind of copy that people of 
his class and mine read. But I felt that if any 
young man came along to ask about the 
structure of the modern drama, he had better 
go on to the British Museum. 

Meantime as the reporters entirely failed to 
elicit the large fund of information which I 
acquired, I reserve my impressions of London 
for a chapter by themselves., 

26 



Ill 

IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON 



///. — Impressions of London 

BEFORE setting down my impressions of 
the great English metropolis, — a phrase 
which I have thought out as a desig- 
nation for London, — I think it proper 
to offer an initial apology. I find that I re- 
ceive impressions with great difficulty and have 
nothing of that easy facility in picking them 
up which is shown by British writers on Amer- 
ica. I remember Hugh Walpole telling me 
that he could hardly walk down Broadway 
iwithout getting at least three dollars' worth 
and on Fifth Avenue ^wt dollars* worth; and 
I recollect that St. John Ervine came up to my 
house in Montreal, drank a cup of tea, bor- 
rowed some tobacco, and got away with sixty 
dollars' worth of impressions of Canadian life 
and character. 

For this kind of thing I have only a despair- 

29 



My Discovery of lEngland 



ing admiration. I can get an impression if I 
am given time and can think about it before- 
hand. But it requires thought. This fact was 
all the more distressing to me in as much as 
one of the leading editors of America had 
made me a proposal, as honourable to him as it 
was lucrative to me, that immediately on my 
arrival in London, — or just before it,^ — I 
should send him a thousand words on the genius 
of the English, and five hundred words on the 
spirit of London, and two hundred words of 
personal chat with Lord Northcliffe. This 
contract I was unable to fulfil except the per- 
sonal chat with Lord Northcliffe, which proved 
an easy matter as he happened to be away in 
Australia. 

But I have since pieced together my impres- 
sions as conscientiously as I could and I present 
them here. If they seem to be a little bit 
modelled on British impressions of America I 
admit at once that the influence is there. We 
writers all act and react on one another; and 
when I see a good thing in another man's book 
I react on it at once. 

30 



Impressions of London 



London, the name of which is already known 
to millions of readers of this book, is beautifully 
situated on the river Thames, which here 
sweeps In a wide curve with much the same 
breadth and majesty as the St. Jo River at 
South Bend, Indiana. London, like South Bend 
itself, is a city of clean streets and admirable 
sidewalks, and has an excellent water supply. 
One is at once struck by the number of excel- 
lent and well-appointed motor cars that one 
sees on every hand, the neatness of the shops 
and the cleanliness and cheerfulness of the faces 
of the people. In short, as an English visitor 
said of Peterborough, Ontario, there is a dis- 
tinct note of optimism in the air. I forget who 
it was who said this, but at any rate I have 
been in Peterborough myself and I have seen it. 

Contrary to my expectations and contrary to 
all our Transatlantic precedents, I was not met 
at the depot by one of the leading citizens, him- 
self a member of the Municipal Council, driv- 
ing his own motor car. He did not tuck a fur 
rug about my knees, present me with a really ex- 
cellent cigar and proceed to drive me about the 

31 



My Discovery of England 



town so as to show me the leading points of 
interest, the municipal reservoir, the gas works 
and the municipal abattoir. In fact he was 
not there. But I attribute his absence not to 
any lack of hospitality but merely to a certain 
reserve in the English character. They are as 
yet unused to the arrival of lecturers. When 
they get to be more accustomed to their coming, 
they will learn to take them straight to the? 
municipal abattoir just as we do. 

For lack of better guidance, therefore, I had 
to form my impressions of London by myself. 
In the mere physical sense there is much to at- 
tract the eye. The city is able to boast of many 
handsome public buildings and offices which 
compare favourably with anything on the other 
side of the Atlantic. On the bank of the 
Thames itself rises the power house of the 
Westminster Electric Supply Corporation, a 
handsome modern edifice in the later Japanese 
style. Close by are the commodious premises 
of the Imperial Tobacco Company, while at no 
great distance the Chelsea Gas Works add a 

32 



Impressions of London 



striking feature of rotundity. Passing north- 
ward, one observes Westminster Bridge, nota- 
ble as a principal station of the underground 
railway. This station and the one next above it, 
the Charing Cross one, are connected by a wide 
thoroughfare called Whitehall. One of the 
best American drug stores is here situated. The 
upper end of Whitehall opens into the majestic 
and spacious Trafalgar Square. Here are 
grouped in imposing proximity the offices of 
the Canadian Pacific and other railways, The 
International Sleeping Car Company, the Mon- 
treal Star, and the Anglo-Dutch Bank. Two 
of the best American barber shops are con- 
veniently grouped near the Square, while the 
existence of a tall stone monument in the mid- 
dle of the Square itself enables the American 
visitor to find them without difficulty. Passing 
eastward towards the heart of the city, one 
notes on the left hand the imposing pile of St. 
Paul's, an enormous church with a round dome 
on the top, suggesting strongly the first Church 
of Christ (Scientist) on Euclid Avenue, Cleve- 

33 



My Discovery of England 



land. But the English churches not being 
labelled, the visitor is often at a loss to distin- 
guish them. 

A little further on one finds oneself In the 
heart of financial London. Here all the great 
financial institutions of America — The First 
National Bank of Milwaukee, The Planters 
National Bank of St. Louis, The Montana 
Farmers Trust Co., and many others, — have 
either their offices or their agents. The Bank 
of England — which acts as the London Agent 
of The Montana Farmers Trust Company, — ? 
and the London County Bank, which represents 
the People's Deposit Co., of Yonkers, N. Y., 
are said to be in the neighbourhood. 

This particular part of London is connected 
with the existence of that strange and myste- 
rious thing called "the City." I am still unable 
to decide whether the city is a person, or a 
place, or a thing. But as a form of being I 
give it credit for being the most emotional, 
the most volatile, the most peculiar creature in 
the world. You read in the morning paper 
that the City is "deeply depressed." At noon 

34 



Impressions of London 



It is reported that the City is *'buoyant" and by 
four o'clock that the City is "wildly excited." 

I have tried in vain to find the causes of 
these peculiar changes of feeling. The ostensi- 
ble reasons, as given in the newspaper, are so 
trivial as to be hardly worthy of belief. For 
example, here is the kind of news that comes 
out from the City. "The news that a modus 
Vivendi has been signed between the Sultan of 
Kowfat and the Shriek-ul-Islam has caused a 
sudden buoyancy in the City. Steel rails which 
had been depressed all morning reacted imme- 
diately while American mules rose up sharply 
to par." . . . "Monsieur Poincare, speaking 
at Bordeaux, said that henceforth France must 
seek to retain by all possible means the ping- 
pong championship of the world: values in the 
City collapsed at once." . . t., "Despatches 
from Bombay say that the Shah of Persia yes- 
terday handed a golden slipper to the Grand 
Vizier Feebli Pasha as a sign that he might go 
and chase himself: the news was at once fol- 
lowed by a drop in oil, and a rapid attempt to 
liquidate everything that is fluid. :.; >] i." 

35 



My Discovery of England 



But these mysteries of the City I do not pre- 
tend to explain. I have passed through the 
place dozens of times and never noticed any- 
thing particular In the way of depression or 
buoyancy, or falling oil, or rising rails. But 
no doubt it is there. 

A little beyond the city and further down the 
river the visitor finds this district of London 
terminating in the gloomy and forbidding 
Tower, the principal penitentiary of the city. 
Here Queen Victoria was imprisoned for many 
years. 

Excellent gasoline can be had at the Ameri- 
can Garage immediately north of the Tower, 
where motor repairs of all kinds are also car- 
ried on. 

These, however, are but the superficial pic- 
tures of London, gathered by the eye of the 
tourist. A far deeper meaning is found in the 
examination of the great historic monuments 
of the city. The principal ones of these are the 
Tower of London (just mentioned) , the British 
Museum and Westminster Abbey. No visitor 
to London should fail to see these. Indeed he 

36 



Impressions of London 



ought to feel that his visit to England is wasted 
unless he has seen them. I speak strongly on 
the point because I feel strongly on it. To my 
mind there is something about the grim fascina- 
tion of the historic Tower, the cloistered quiet 
of the Museum and the majesty of the ancient 
Abbey, which will make it the regret of my life 
that I didn't see any one of the three. I fully 
meant to: but I failed: and I can only hope 
that the circumstances of my failure may be 
helpful to other visitors. 

The Tower of London I most certainly in- 
tended to inspect. Each day, after the fashion 
of every tourist, I wrote for myself a little list 
of things to do and I always put the Tower of 
London on it. No doubt the reader knows the 
kind of little list that I mean. It runs : 

I* Go to bank. 

2. Buy a shirt. 

3. National Picture Gallery. 

4. Razor blades. 

'5. Tower of London. 

6. Soap. 

This itinerary, I regret to say, was never car- 

37 



My Discovery of England 



ried out In full. I was able at times both to go 
to the bank and buy a shirt in a single morning: 
at other times I was able to buy razor blades 
and almost to find the National Picture Gal- 
lery. Meantime I was urged on all sides by 
my London acquaintances not to fail to see the 
Tower. ^'There's a grim fascination about the 
place," they said; ''you mustn't miss it." I am 
quite certain that in due course of time I should 
have made my way to the Tower but for the 
fact that I made a fatal discovery. I found 
out that the London people who urged me to 
go and see the Tower had never seen it them- 
selves. It appears they never go near it. One 
night at a dinner a man next to me said, "Have 
you seen the Tower? You really ought to. 
There's a grim fascination about it." I looked 
him in the face. "Have you seen it yourself?" 
I asked. "Oh, yes," he answered. "I've seen 
it." "When?" I asked. The man hesitated. 
"When I was just a boy," he said, "my father 
took me there.'* "How long ago is that?'* I 
enquired. "About forty years ago," he an- 

38 



Impressions of London 



swered; "I always mean to go again but I don't 
somehow seem to get the time.'* 

After this I got to understand that when a 
Londoner says, "Have you seen the Tower of 
London?" the answer is, "No, and neither have 
you." 

Take the parallel case of the British Mu- 
seum. Here is a place that is a veritable 
treasure house. A repository of some of the 
most priceless historical relics to be found upon 
the earth. It contains, for instance, the famous 
Papyrus Manuscript of Thotmes II of the first 
Egyptian dynasty — a thing known to scholars 
all over the world as the oldest extant specimen 
of what can be called writing; indeed one can 
here see the actual evolution (I am quoting 
from a work of reference, or at least from my 
recollection of it) from the ideographic cunei- 
form to the phonetic syllabic script. Every 
time I have read about that manuscript and 
have happened to be in Orillia (Ontario) or 
Schenectady (N. Y.) or any such place, I have 
felt that I would be willing to take a whole trip 

39 



My Discovery of England 



to England to have five minutes at the British 
Museum, just five, to look at that papyrus. 
Yet as soon as I got to London this changed. 
The railway stations of London have been so 
arranged that to get to any train for the north 
or west, the traveller must pass the British 
Museum. The first time I went by it in a taxi, 
I felt quite a thrill. ^'Inside those walls," I 
thought to myself, "is the manuscript of Thot- 
mes IL" The next time I actually stopped the 
taxi. "Is that the British Museum?" I asked 
the driver. "I think it is something of the sort, 
sir," he said. I hesitated. "Drive me," I said, 
"to where I can buy safety razor blades." 

After that I was able to drive past the Mu- 
seum with the quiet assurance of a Londoner, 
and to take part in dinner table discussions as 
to whether the British Museum or the Louvre 
contains the greater treasures. It is quite easy 
any way. All you have to do is to remember 
that The Winged Victory of Samothrace is in 
the Louvre and the papyrus of Thotmes II (or 
some such document) is in the Museum. 

The Abbey, I admit, is indeed majestic. I 

40 



Impressions of London 



did not intend to miss going into it. But I felt, 
as so many tourists have, that I wanted to enter 
it in the proper frame of mind. I never got 
into the frame of mind; at least not when near 
the Abbey itself. I have been in exactly that 
frame of mind when on State Street, Chicago, 
or on King Street, Toronto, or anywhere three 
thousand miles away from the Abbey. But by 
bad luck I never struck both the frame of mind 
and the Abbey at the same time. 

But the Londoners, after all, in not seeing 
their own wonders, are only like the rest of the 
world. The people who live in Buffalo never 
go to see Niagara Falls; people in Cleve- 
land don't know which is Mr. Rockefeller's 
house, and people live and even die in New 
York without going up to the top of the Wool- 
worth Building. And anyway the past is re- 
mote and the present is near. I know a cab 
driver in the city of Quebec whose business in 
life it is to drive people up to see the Plains of 
Abraham, but unless they bother him to do it, 
he doesn't show them the spot where Wolfe 
fell; what he does point out with real zest is 

41 



My Discovery of England 



the place where the Mayor and the City Council 
sat on the wooden platform that they put up 
for the municipal celebration last summer. 

No description of London would be com- 
plete without a reference, however brief, to the 
singular salubrity and charm of the London 
climate. This is seen at its best during the 
autumn and winter months. The climate of 
London and indeed of England generally is due 
to the influence of the Gulf Stream. The way 
it works is thus: The Gulf Stream, as it nears 
the shores of the British Isles and feels the pro- 
pinquity of Ireland, rises into the air, turns into 
soup, and comes down on London. At times 
the soup is thin and is in fact little more than a 
mist: at other times it has the consistency of a 
thick Potage St. Germain. London people are a 
little sensitive on the point and flatter their at- 
mosphere by calling it a fog: but it is not: it 
is soup. The notion that no sunlight ever gets 
through and that in the London winter people 
never see the sun is of course a ridiculous error, 
circulated no doubt by the jealousy of foreign 
nations. I have myself seen the sun plainly 

42 



ImpressioTis of London 



visible in London, without the aid of glasses, 
on a November day in broad daylight; and 
again one night about four o'clock in the after- 
noon I saw the sun distinctly appear through 
the clouds. The whole subject of daylight in 
the London winter is, however, one which be- 
longs rather to the technique of astronomy 
than to a book of description. In practice day- 
light is but little used. Electric lights are 
burned all the time in all houses, buildings, rail- 
way stations and clubs. This practice which is 
now universally observed is called Daylight 
Saving. 

But the distinction between day and night 
during the London winter is still quite obvious 
to any one of an observant mind. It is indicated 
by various signs such as the striking of clocks, 
the tolling of bells, the closing of saloons, and 
the raising of taxi rates. It is much less easy 
to distinguish the technical approach of night in 
the other cities of England that lie outside the 
confines, physical and intellectual, of London 
and live in a continuous gloom. In such places 
as the great manufacturing cities, Buggingham- 

43 



My Discovery of England 



under-Smoke, or Gloomsbury-on-Ooze, night 
may be said to be perpetual. 

• « » • • 

I had written the whole of the above chapter 
and looked on It as finished when I realised that 
I had made a terrible omission. I neglected to 
say anything about the Mind of London. This 
is a thing that Is always put Into any book of 
discovery and observation and I can only apolo- 
gise for not having discussed it sooner. I am 
quite familiar with other people's chapters on 
*'The Mind of America,'* and "The Chinese 
Mind," and so forth. Indeed, so far as I know 
it has turned out that almost everybody all over 
the world has a mind. Nobody nowadays trav- 
els, even in Central America or Thibet, with- 
out bringing back a chapter on **The Mind of 
Costa Rica," or on the "Psychology -of the 
Mongolian." Even the gentler peoples sucH 
as the Burmese, the Siamese, the Hawalians, 
and the Russians, though they have no minds 
are written up as souls. 

It is quite obvious then that there is sucH a: 

44 



Impressions of London 



thing as the mind of London : and it Is all the 
more culpable In me to have neglected It in as 
much as my editorial friend in New York had 
expressly mentioned It to me before I sailed. 
* What," said he, leaning far over his desk after 
his massive fashion and reaching out Into the 
air, *Vhat is in the minds of these people? 
Are they,'' he added, half to himself, though I 
heard him, "are they thinking? And, if they 
think, what do they think?" 

I did therefore, during my stay in London, 
make an accurate study of the things that Lon- 
don seemed to be thinking about. As a com- 
parative basis for this study I brought with me 
a carefully selected list of the things that New 
York was thinking about at the moment. These 
I selected from the current newspapers In the 
proportions to the amount of space allotted to 
each topic and the size of the heading that an- 
nounced It. Having thus a working Idea of 
what I may call the mind of New York, I was 
able to collect and set beside it a list of similar 
topics, taken from the London Press to repre- 

45 



My Discovery of England 



sent the mind of London. The two placed side 
by side make an Interesting piece of psychologi- 
cal analysis. They read as follows : 

THE MIND OF NEW YORK THE MIND OF LONDON' 
What is it thinking? What is it thinking f 

1. Do chorus girls make i. Do chorus girls marry 

good wives? well? 

2. Is red hair a sign of 2,. What is red hair a 

temperament? sign of? 

3. Can a woman be in 3. Can a man be in love 

love with two men ? with two women ? 

4. Is fat a sign of genius ? 4. Is genius a sign of fat ? 

Looking over these lists, I think It Is better 
to present them without comment; I feel sure 
that somewhere or other In them one should de- 
tect the heart-throbs, the pulsations of two 
great peoples. But I don't get It. In fact the 
two lists look to me terribly like *'the mind of 
Costa Rica.'' 

The same editor also advised me to mingle, 
at his expense, in the brilliant Intellectual life 
of England. ^'There,*' he said, "Is a coterie of 
men, probably the most brilliant group East of 

46 



Impressions of London 



the Mississippi (I think he said the Missis- 
sippi). "You will find them,'' he said to me, 
*^brilliant, witty, filled with repartee." He sug- 
gested that I should send him back, as far as 
words could express it, some of this brilliance. 
I was very glad to be able to do this, although 
I fear that the results were not at all what he 
had anticipated. Still, I held conversations with 
these people and I gave him, in all truthfulness, 
the result. Sir James Barrie said, "This is 
really very exceptional weather for this time of 
year." Cyril Maude said, "And so a Martini 
cocktail is merely gin and vermouth." Ian Hay 
said, "You'll find the underground ever so 
handy once you understand it." 

I have a lot more of these repartees that I 
could insert here if it was necessary. But some- 
how I feel that it is not. 



47 



ir 

A CLEAR VIEW OF THE 

GOVERNMENT AND 

POLITICS OF 

ENGLAND 



IV, — A Clear View qf the Gov- 
eminent and Politics of England 

A LOYAL British subject like myself in 
dealing with the government of Eng- 
land should necessarily begin with a 
discussion of the monarchy. I have 
never had the pleasure of meeting the King, — • 
except once on the G.T.R. platform in Orillia, 
Ontario, when he was the Duke of York and I 
was one of the welcoming delegates of the town 
council. No doubt he would recall it in a min- 
ute. 

But in England the King is surrounded by 
formality and circumstance. On many morn- 
ings I waited round the gates of Buckingham 
Palace but I found it quite impossible to meet 
the King in the quiet sociable way in which one 
met him in Orillia. The English, it seems, love 
to make the kingship a subject of great pomp 

SI 



My Discovery of England 



and official etiquette. In Canada it is quite dif- 
ferent. Perhaps we understand kings and 
princes better than the English do. At any 
rate we treat them in a far more human heart- 
to-heart fashion than is the English custom, and 
they respond to it at once. I remember when 
King George — he was, as I say, Duke of 
York then — rcame up to Orillia, Ontario, how 
we all met him in a delegation on the platform. 
Bob Curran — -Bob was Mayor of the town that 
year — went up to him and shook hands with 
him and invited him to come right on up to the 
Orillia House where he had a room reserved 
for him. Charlie Janes and Mel Tudhope and 
the other boys who were on the town Council 
'gathered round the royal prince and shook 
hands and told him that he simply must stay 
over. George Rapley, the bank manager, said 
that if he wanted a cheque cashed or anything 
of that sort to come right into the Royal Bank 
and he would do it for him. The prince had 
two aides-de-camp with him and a secretary, but 
Bob Curran said to bring them uptown too and 
it would be all right. We had planned to have 

52 



Clear View of Government 

an oyster supper for the Prince at Jim Smithes 
hotel and then take him either to the Y.M.C.A. 
Pool Room or else over to the tea social in the 
basement of the Presbyterian Church. 

Unluckily the prince couldn't stayer It turned 
out that he had to get right back into his train 
and go on to Peterborough, Ontario, where 
they were to have a brass band to meet him, 
which naturally he didn't want to miss. 

But the point is that it was a real welcome. 
And you could see that the prince appreciated 
it. There was a warmth and a meaning to it 
that the prince understood at once. It was a 
pity that he couldn't have stayed over and had 
time to see the carriage factory and the new 
sewerage plant. We all told the prince that he 
must come back and he said that if he could he 
most certainly would. When the prince's train 
pulled out of the station and we all went back 
uptown together (it was beforq prohibition 
came to Ontario) you could feel that the insti- 
tution of royalty :was quite solid in Orillia for 
a generation. 

But you don't get that sort of thing in Eng- 

S3 



My Discovery of England 



land. There's a formality and coldness In all 
their dealings with royalty that would never go 
down with us. They like to have the King 
come and open Parliament dressed in royal 
robes, and with a clattering troop of soldiers 
riding in front of him. As for taking him over 
to the Y-.M.C.A. to play pin pool, they never 
think of It. They have seen so much of the 
mere outside of his kingship that they don't 
understand the heart of it as we do in Canada. 
But let us turn to the House of Commons: 
for no description of England would be com- 
plete without at least some mention of this in- 
teresting body. Indeed for the ordinary visitor 
to London the greatest interest of all attaches 
to the spacious and magnificent Parliament 
Buildings. The House of Commons Is com- 
modiously situated beside the River Thames. 
The principal features of the House are the 
large lunch room on the western side and the 
tea-room on the terrace on the eastern, A series 
of smaller luncheon rooms extend (apparently) / 
all round about the premises: while a commo- 
dious bar offers a ready access to the members 

54 



Clear View of Government 



at all hours of the day. While any members 
are in the bar a light is kept burning in the tall 
Clock Tower at one comer of the building, but 
when the bar is closed the light is turned off by 
whichever of the Scotch members leaves last. 
There is a handsome legislative chamber at- 
tached to the premises from which — so the an- 
tiquarians tell us — ^the House of Commons took 
its name. But it is not usual now for the mem- 
bers to sit in the legislative chamber as the legis- 
lation is now all done outside, either at the 
home of Mr. Lloyd George, or at the National 
Liberal Club, or at one or other of the news- 
paper offices. The House, however, is called 
together at very frequent intervals to give it 
an opportunity of hearing the latest legislation 
and allowing the members to indulge in cheers, 
sighs, groans, votes and other expressions of 
vitality. After having cheered as much as is 
good for it, it goes back again to the lunch 
rooms and goes on eating till needed again. 

It is, however, an entire exaggeration to say 
that the House of Commons no longer has a 
real share in the government of England. This 

ss 



My Discovery of England 



is not so. Anybody connected with the govern- 
ment values the House of Commons in a high 
degree. One of the leading newspaper pro- 
prietors of London himself told me that he has 
always felt that if he had the House of Com- 
mons on his side he had a very valuable ally. 
Many of the labour leaders are inclined to re- 
gard the House of Commons as of great utility, 
while the leading women's organizations, now 
that women are admitted as members, may be 
said to regard the House as one of themselves. 
Looking around to find just where the natural 
service of the House of Commons comes in, I 
am inclined to think that it must be in the prac- 
tice of "asking questions" in the House. When- 
ever anything goes wrong a member rises and 
asks a question. He gets up, for example, with 
a little paper in his hand, and asks the govern- 
ment if ministers are aware that the Khedive 
of Egypt was seen yesterday wearing a Turkish 
Tarbosh. Ministers say very humbly that they 
hadn't known it, and a thrill runs through the 
whole country. The members can apparently 
ask any questions they like. In the repeated 

56 



Clear View of Government 



visits which I made to the gallery of the House 
of Commons I was unable to find any particular 
sense or meaning in the questions asked, though 
no doubt they had an intimate bearing on Eng- 
lish politics not clear to an outsider like myself. 
I heard one member ask the government 
whether they were aware that herrings were 
being imported from Hamburg to Harwich. 
The government said no. Another member 
rose and asked the government whether they 
considered Shakespere or Moliere the greater 
dramatic artist. The government answered 
that ministers were taking this under their ear- 
nest consideration and that a report would be 
submitted to Parliament. Another member 
asked the government if they knew who won 
the Queen's Plate this season at Toronto. 
They did, — in fact this member got in wrong, 
as this is the very thing that the government do 
know. Towards the close of the evening a 
member rose and asked the government if they 
knew what time it was. The Speaker, however, 
ruled this question out of order on the ground 
that it had been answered before. 

57 



My Discovery of England 



The Parliament Buildings are so vast that it 
is not possible to state with certainty what they 
do, or do not, contain. But it is generally said 
that somewhere in the building is the House of 
Lords. When they meet they are said to come 
together very quietly shortly before the dinner 
hour, take a glass of dry sherry and a biscuit 
(they are all abstemious men), reject whatever 
bills may be before them at the moment, take 
another dry sherry and then adjourn for two 
years. 

The public are no longer allowed unrestricted 
access to the Houses of ParHament; its ap- 
proaches are now strictly guarded by policemen. 
In order to obtain admission it is necessary 
either to (A) communicate in writing with the 
Speaker of the House, enclosing certificates of 
naturalization and proof of identity, or (B) 
give the policeman five shillings. Method B is 
the one usually adopted. On great nights, how- 
ever, when the House of Commons is sitting 
and is about to do something important, such as 
ratifying a Home Rule Bill or cheering, or wel- 
coming a new lady member, it is not possible to 

58 



Clear View of Government 



enter by merely bribing the policeman with five 
shillings; it takes a pound. The English people 
complain bitterly of the rich Americans who 
have in this way corrupted the London public. 
Before they were corrupted they would do any- 
thing for sixpence. 

This peculiar vein of corruption by the 
Americans runs like a thread, I may say, 
through all the texture of English life. Among 
those who have been principally exposed to it 
are the servants, — especially butlers and chauf- 
feurs, hotel porters, bell-boys, railway porters 
and guards, all taxi-drivers, pew-openers, cu- 
rates, bishops, and a large part of the peerage. 

The terrible ravages that have been made by 
the Americans on English morality are wit- 
nessed on every hand. Whole classes of society 
are hopelessly damaged. I have it in the evi- 
dence of the English themselves and there 
seems to be no doubt of the fact. Till the 
Americans came to England the people were an 
honest, law-abiding race, respecting their su- 
periors and despising those below them. They 
had never been corrupted by money and their 

59 



My Discovery of England 



employers extended to them in this regard their 
tenderest solicitude. Then the Americans came. 
Servants ceased to be what they were; butlers 
were hopelessly damaged; hotel porters became 
a wreck; taxi-drivers turned out thieves; curates 
could no longer be trusted to handle money; 
peers sold their daughters at a million dollars 
a piece or three for two. In fact the whole 
kingdom began to deteriorate till it got where 
it is now. At present after a rich American 
has stayed in any English country house, its 
owners find that they can do nothing with the 
butler; a wildness has come over the man. 
There Is a restlessness in his demeanour and a 
strange wistful look in his eye as If seeking for 
something. In many cases, so I understand, 
after an American has stayed in a country house 
the butler goes insane. He is found In his pan- 
try counting over the sixpence given to him by 
a Duke, and laughing to himself. He has to 
be taken in charge by the police. With him 
generally go the chauffeur, whose mind has 
broken down from driving a rich American 
twenty miles; and the gardener, who is found 

60 



Clear View of Government 



tearing up raspberry bushes by the roots to see 
if there is any money under them; and the local 
curate whose brain has collapsed or expanded, 
I forget which, when a rich American gave him 
fifty dollars for his soup kitchen. 

There are, it is true, a few classes that have 
escaped this contagion, shepherds living in the 
hills, drovers, sailors, fishermen and such like. 
I remember the first time I went into the Eng- 
lish country-side being struck with the clean, 
honest look in the people's faces. I realised 
exactly where they got it: they had never seen 
any Americans. I remember speaking to an 
aged peasant down in Somerset. "Have you 
ever seen any Americans?" "Nah," he said, 
*'uz eeard a mowt o' 'em, zir, but uz zeen nowt 
o' 'em." It was clear that the noble fellow was 
quite undamaged by American contact. 

Now the odd thing about this corruption is 
that exactly the same idea is held on the other 
side of the water. It is a known fact that if a 
young English Lord comes to an American 
town he puts it to the bad in one week. Socially 
the whole place goes to pieces. Girls whose 

6i 



My Discovery of England 



parents are in the hardware business and who 
used to call their father "pop" begin to talk of 
precedence and whether a Duchess Dowager 
goes in to dinner ahead of or behind a countess 
scavenger. After the young Lord has attended 
two dances and one tea-social in the Methodist 
Church Sunday School Building (Adults 25 
cents, children 10 cents — all welcome.) there is 
nothing for the young men of the town to do 
except to drive him out or go further west. 

One can hardly wonder then that this general 
corruption has extended even to the policemen 
who guard the Houses of Parliament. On the 
other hand this vein of corruption has not ex- 
tended to English politics. Unlike ours, Eng- 
lish politics, — one hears it on every hand, — are 
pure. Ours unfortunately are known to be not 
so. The difference seems to be that our politi- 
cians will do anything for money and the Eng- 
lish politicians won't; they just take the money 
and won't do a thing for it. 

Somehow there always seems to be a peculiar 
interest about English political questions that 
we don't find elsewhere. At home in Canada 

62 



Clear View of Government 



our politics turn on such things as how much 
money the Canadian National Railways lose as 
compared with how much they could lose if they 
really tried; on whether the Grain Growers of 
Manitoba should be allowed to import ploughs 
without paying a duty or to pay a duty without 
importing the ploughs. Our members at Ot- 
tawa discuss such things as highway subsidies, 
dry farming, the Bank Act, and the tariff on 
hardware. These things leave me absolutely 
cold. To be quite candid there is something 
terribly plebeian about them. In short, our pol- 
itics are what we call In French "peuple.'^ 

But when one turns to England, what a 
striking difference! The English, with the 
whole huge British Empire to fish In and the 
European system to draw upon, can always dig 
up some kind of political topic of discussion that 
has a real charm about it. One month you find 
English politics turning on the Oasis of Merv 
and the next on the hinterland of Albania ; or a 
member rises in the Commons with a little bit 
of paper in his hand and desires to ask the for- 
eign secretary If he Is aware that the Ahkoond 

63 



My Discovery of England 



of Swat is dead. The foreign secretary states 
that the government have no information other 
than that the Ahkoond was dead a month ago. 
There is a distinct sensation in the House at the 
realisation that the Ahkoond has been dead a 
month without the House having known that 
he was alive. The sensation is conveyed to the 
Press and the afternoon papers appear with 
large headings, The Ahkoond of Swat Is 
Dead. The public who have never heard of the 
Ahkoond bare their heads in a moment in a 
pause to pray for the Ahkoond's soul. Then 
the cables take up the refrain and word is 
flashed all over the world, The Ahkoond of 
Swat is Dead, 

There was a Canadian journalist and poet 
once who was so impressed with the news that 
the Ahkoond was dead, so bowed down with 
regret that he had never known the Ahkoond 
while alive, that he forthwith wrote a poem in 
memory of The Ahkoond of Swat. I have al- 
ways thought that the reason of the wide ad- 
miration that Lannigan's verses received was 
not merely because of the brilliant wit that is in 

64 



Clear View of Government 

them but because In a wider sense they typify 
so beautifully the scope of English politics. 
The death of the Ahkoond of Swat, and 
whether Great Britain should support as his suc- 
cessor Mustalpha El Djin or Kamu Flaj, — 
there Is something worth talking of over an 
afternoon tea table. But suppose that the 
whole of the Manitoba Grain Growers were to 
die. What could one say about It? They'd be 
dead, that's all. 

So It Is that people all over the world turn 
to English politics with interest. What more 
delightful than to open an atlas, find out where 
the new kingdom of Hejaz Is, and then vio- 
lently support the British claim to a protector- 
ate over It. Over in America we don't under- 
stand this sort of thing. There is naturally 
little chance to do so and we don't know how to 
use it when it comes. I remember that when a 
chance did come in connection with the great 
Venezuela dispute over the ownership of the 
jungles and mud-flats of British Guiana, the 
American papers at once inserted headings, 
Where Is the Essiquibo River? That 

65 



My Discovery of England 



spoiled the whole thing. If you admit that you 
don't know where a place is, then the bottom is 
knocked out of all discussion. But if you pre- 
tend that you do, then you arc all right. Mr. 
Lloyd George is said to have caused great 
amusement at the Versailles Conference by ad- 
mitting that he hadn't known where Teschen 
was. So at least it was reported in the papers; 
and for all I know it might even have been true. 
But the fun that he raised was not really half 
what could have been raised. I have it on good 
authority that two of the American delegates 
hadn't known where Austria Proper was and 
thought that Unredeemed Italy was on the East 
side of New York, while the Chinese Delegate 
thought that the Cameroons were part of Scot- 
land. But it is these little geographic niceties 
that lend a charm to European politics that ours 
lack forever. 

I don't mean to say the English politics al- 
ways turn on romantic places or on small ques- 
tions. They don't. They often include ques- 
tions of the largest order. But when the Eng- 
lish introduce a really large question as the basis 

66 



Clear View of Government 



of their politics they like to select one that is 
insoluble. This guarantees that It will last. 
Take for example the rights of the Crown as 
against the people. That lasted for one hun- 
dred years, — all the seventeenth century. In 
Oklahoma or In Alberta they would have called 
a convention on the question, settled it In two 
weeks and spoiled It for further use. In the 
same way the Protestant Reformation was used 
for a hundred years and the Reform Bill for a 
generation. 

At the present time the genius of the English 
for politics has selected as their insoluble politi- 
cal question the topic of the German indemnity. 
The essence of the problem as I understand it 
may be stated as follows : 

It was definitely settled by the Conference at 
Versailles that Germany is to pay the Allies 
3,912,486,782,421 marks. I think that is the 
correct figure, though of course I am speaking 
only from memory. At any rate, the correct 
figure is within a hundred billion marks of the 
above. 

The sum to be paid was not reached without 

67 



My Discovery of England 



a great deal of discussion. Monsieur Briand, 
the French Minister, is reported to have thrown 
out the figure 4,281,390,687,471. But Mr. 
Lloyd George would not pick it up. Nor do I 
blame him unless he had a basket to pick it up 
with. 

Lloyd George's point of view was that the 
Germans could very properly pay a limited 
amount such as 3,912,486,782,421 marks, but 
It was not feasible to put on them a burden of 
4,281,390,687,471 marks. 

By the way, if any one at this point doubts 
the accuracy of the figures just given, all he has 
to do is to take the amount of the indemnity as 
stated in gold marks and then multiply it by 
the present value of the mark and he will find 
to his chagrin that the figures are correct. If 
he is still not satisfied I refer him to a book of 
Logarithms. If he is not satisfied with that I 
refer him to any work on conic sections and if 
not convinced even then I refer him so far that 
he will never come back. 

The indemnity being thus fixed, the next ques- 
tion is as to the method of collecting it. In the 

68 



Clear View of Government 



first place there is no intention of allowing the 
Germans to pay in actual cash. If they do this 
they will merely inflate the English beyond what 
is bearable. England has been inflated now for 
eight years and has had enough of it. 

In the second place, it is understood that it 
will not do to allow the Germans to off er 4, 2 8 1 ,- 
390,687,471 marks' worth of coal. It is more 
than the country needs. 

What is more, if the English want coal they 
propose to buy it in an ordinary decent way 
from a Christian coal-dealer in their own coun- 
try. They do not purpose to ruin their own 
coal Industry for the sake of building up the 
prosperity of the German nation. 

What I say of coal Is applied with equal force 
to any offers of food, grain, oil, petroleum, gas, 
or any other natural product. Payment in any 
of these will be sternly refused. Even now it is 
all the British farmers can do to live and for 
some it Is more. Many of them are having to 
sell off their motors and pianos and to send 
their sons to college to work. At the same 
time, the German producer by depressing the 

69 



My Discovery of England 



mark further and further is able to work four- 
teen hours a day. This argument may not be 
quite correct but I take it as I find it in the 
London Press. Whether I state it correctly or 
not, it is quite plain that the problem is insolu- 
ble. That is all that is needed in first class 
politics. 

A really good question like the German rep- 
aration question will go on for a century. Un- 
doubtedly in the year 2000 A.D., a British Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer will still be explaining 
that the government is fully resolved that Ger- 
many shall pay to the last farthing {cheers) : 
but that ministers have no intention of allowing 
the German payment to take a form that will 
undermine British industry {wild applause) : 
that the German indemnity shall be so paid that 
without weakening the power of the Germans 
to buy from us it shall increase our power of 
selling to them. 

Such questions last forever. 

On the other hand sometimes by sheer care- 
lessness a question gets settled and passes out 
of politics. This, so we are given to under- 

70 



Clear View of Government 

stand, has happened to the Irish question. It 
is settled. A group of Irish delegates and 
British ministers got together round a table and 
settled it. The settlement has since been cele- 
brated at a demonstration of brotherhood by 
the Irish Americans of New York with only six 
casualties. Henceforth the Irish question 
passes into history. There may be some odd 
lighting along the Ulster border, or a little civil 
war with perhaps a little revolution every now 
and then, but as a question the thing is finished. 

I must say that I for one am very sorry to 
think that the Irish question is gone. We shall 
miss it greatly. Debating societies which have 
flourished on it ever since 1886 will be wrecked 
for want of it. Dinner parties will now lose 
half the sparkle of their conversation. It will 
be no longer possible to make use of such good 
old remarks as, **After all the Irish are a gifted 
people," or, "You must remember that fifty per 
cent of the great English generals were Irish." 

The settlement turned out to be a very simple 
affair. Ireland was merely given dominion 
status. What that is, no one knows, but it 

71 



My Discovery of England 



means that the Irish have now got it and that 
they sink from the high place that they had in 
the white light of publicity to the level of the 
Canadians or the New Zealanders. 

Whether it is quite a proper thing to settle 
trouble by conferring dominion status on it, is 
open to question. It is a practice that is bound 
to spread. It is rumoured that it is now con- 
templated to confer dominion status upon the 
Borough of Poplar and on the Cambridge 
undergraduates. It is even understood that at 
the recent disarmament conference England of- 
fered to confer dominion status on the United 
States. President Harding would assuredly 
have, accepted it at once but for the protest of 
Mr. Briand, who claimed that any such offer 
must be accompanied by a permission to in- 
crease the French fire-brigade by fifty per cent. 

It is lamentable, too, that at the very same 
moment when the Irish question was extin- 
guished, the Naval Question which had lasted 
for nearly fifty years was absolutely obliterated 
by disarmament. Henceforth the alarm of in- 
vasion is a thing of the past and the navy prac- 

72 



Clear View of Government 



tically needless. Beyond keeping a fleet in the 
North Sea and one on the Mediterranean, and 
maintaining a patrol all round the rim of the 
Pacific Ocean, Britain will cease to be a naval 
power. A mere annual expenditure of fifty mil- 
lion pounds sterling will suffice for such thin 
pretence of naval preparedness as a disarmed 
nation will have to maintain. 

This thing too, came as a surprise, or at least 
a surprise to the general public who are una- 
ware of the workings of diplomacy. Those who 
know about such things were fully aware of 
what would happen if a whole lot of British 
sailors and diplomatists and journalists were 
exposed to the hospitalities of Washington. 
The British and Americans are both alike. You 
can't drive them or lead them or coerce them, 
but if you give them a cigar they'll do anything. 

The inner history of the conference is only 
just beginning to be known. But it Is whispered 
that immediately on his arrival Mr. Balfour 
was given a cigar by President Harding. Mr. 
Balfour at once offered to scrap five ships, and 
invited the entire American cabinet Into the 

73 



My Discovery of England 



British Embassy, where Sir A. Geddes was rash 
enough to offer them champagne. 

The American delegates Immediately offered 
to scrap ten ships. Mr. Balfour, who simply 
cannot be outdone in international courtesy, saw 
the ten and raised it to twenty. President 
Harding saw the twenty, raised It to thirty, and 
sent out for more poker chips. 

At the close of the play Lord Beatty, who is 
urbanity Itself, offered to scrap Portsmouth 
Dockyard, and asked if anybody present would 
like Canada. President Harding replied with 
his customary tact that if England wanted the 
Philippines, he would think It what he would 
term a residuum of normalcy to give them 
away. There is no telling what might have 
happened had not Mr. Briand Interposed to say 
that any transfer of the Philippines must be 
regarded as a signal for a twenty per cent in- 
crease in the Boy Scouts of France. As a tact- 
ful conclusion to the matter President Harding 
raised Mr. Balfour to the peerage. 

As things are, disarmament coming along 
with the Irish settlement, leaves English politics 

74 



Clear View of Government 

in a bad way. The general outlook is too peace- 
ful altogether. One looks round almost in vain 
for any of those "strained relations" which used 
to be the very basis of English foreign policy. 
In only one direction do I see light for English 
politics, and that is over towards Czecho-Slo- 
vakia. It appears that Czecho-Slovakia owes 
the British Exchequer fifty million sterling. I 
cannot quote the exact figure, but it is either 
fifty million or fifty billion. In either case 
Czecho-Slovakia is unable to pay. The an- 
nouncement has just been made by M. Sgitzch, 
the new treasurer, that the country is bankrupt 
or at least that he sees his way to make it so in 
a week. 

It has been at once reported in City circles 
that there are **strained relations'' between 
Great Britain and Czecho-Slovakia. Now what 
I advise is, that if the relations are strained, 
keep them so. England has lost nearly all the 
strained relations she ever had; let her cherish 
the few that she still has. I know that there 
are other opinions. The suggestion has been at 
once made for a "round table conference," at 

75 



My Discovery of England 



which the whole thing can be freely discussed 
without formal protocols and something like a 
"gentleman's agreement" reached. I say, don't 
do it. England is being ruined by these round 
table conferences. They are sitting round in 
Cairo and Calcutta and Capetown, filling all 
the best hotels and eating out the substance of 
the taxpayer. 

I am told that Lloyd George has offered to 
go to Czecho-Slovakia. He should be stopped. 
It is said that Professor Keynes has proved that 
the best way to deal with the debt of Czecho- 
slovakia is to send them whatever cash we have 
left, thereby turning the exchange upside down 
on them, and forcing them to buy all their 
Christmas presents in Manchester. 

It is wiser not to do anything of the sort. 
England should send them a good old-fashioned 
ultimatum, mobilise all the naval officers at the 
Embankment hotels, raise the income tax an- 
other sixpence, and defy them. 

If that were done it might prove a successful 
first step in bringing English politics back to 
the high plane of conversational interest from 
which they are threatening to fall. 

76 



V 
OXFORD AS I SEE IT 



V. — Oxford as I See It 

MY private station being that of a uni- 
versity professor, I was naturally 
deeply interested in the system of edu- 
cation in England. I was therefore 
led to make a special visit to Oxford and to 
submit the place to a searching scrutiny. Ar- 
riving one afternoon at four o'clock, I stayed 
at the Mitre Hotel and did not leave until 
eleven o'clock next morning. The whole of 
this time, except for one hour spent in address- 
ing the undergraduates, was devoted to a close 
and eager study of the great university. When 
I add to this that I had already visited Oxford 
in 1907 and spent a Sunday at All Souls with 
Colonel L. S. Amery, it will be seen at once 
that my views on Oxford are based upon ob- 
servations extending over fourteen years. 
At any rate I can at least claim that my ac- 

79 



My Discovery of England 



qualntance with the British university is just 
as good a basis for reflection and judgment as 
that of the numerous English critics who come 
to our side of the water. I have known a fa- 
mous English author to arrive at Harvard Uni- 
versity in the morning, have lunch with Presi- 
dent Lowell, and then write a whole chapter on 
the Excellence of Higher Education in America. 
I have known another one come to Harvard, 
have lunch with President Lowell, and do an 
entire book on the Decline of Serious Study in 
America. Or take the case of my own univers- 
ity. I remember Mr. Rudyard Kipling coming 
to McGill and saying in his address to the 
undergraduates at 2.30 p.m.^ "You have here a 
great institution.'' But how could he have gath- 
ered this information? As far as I know he 
spent the entire morning with Sir Andrew Mac- 
phail in his house beside the campus, smoking 
cigarettes. When I add that he distinctly re- 
fused to visit the Palaeontologic Museum, that 
he saw nothing of our new hydraulic apparatus, 
or of our classes in Domestic Science, his judg- 
ment that we had here a great institution seems 

80 



Oxford as I See It 



a little bit superficial. I can only put beside it, 
to redeem It in some measure, the hasty and ill- 
formed judgment expressed by Lord Milner, 
*'McGill is a noble university" : and the rash 
and indiscreet expression of the Prince of 
Wales, when we gave him an LL.D. degree, 
"McGill has a glorious future." 

To my mind these unthinking judgments 
about our great college do harm, and I deter- 
mined, therefore, that anything that I said about 
Oxford should be the result of the actual ob- 
servation and real study based upon a bona fide 
residence in the Mitre Hotel. 

On the strength of this basis of experience I 
am prepared to make the following positive and 
emphatic statements. Oxford Is a noble uni- 
versity. It has a great past. It is at present 
the greatest university In the world: and it is 
quite possible that it has a great future. Ox- 
ford trains scholars of the real type better than 
any other place in the world. Its methods are 
antiquated. It despises science. Its lectures 
are rotten. It has professors who never teach 
and students who never learn. It has no order, 

8i 



My Discovery of England 



no arrangement, no system. Its curriculum Is 
unintelligible. It has no president. It has no 
state legislature to tell It how to teach, and yet, 
'■ — it gets there. Whether we like It or not, Ox- 
ford gives something to its students, a life and 
a mode of thought, which In America as yet we 
can emulate but not equal. 

If anybody doubts this let him go and take a 
room at the Mitre Hotel (ten and six for a 
wainscotted bedroom, period of Charles I) and 
study the place for himself. 

These singular results achieved at Oxford 
are all the more surprising when one considers 
the distressing conditions under which the 
students work. The lack of an adequate build- 
ing fund compels them to go on working in the 
same old buildings which they have had for 
centuries. The buildings at Brasenose College 
have not been renewed since the year 1525. In 
New College and Magdalen the students are 
still housed in the old buildings erected in 
the sixteenth century. At Christ Church I 
was shown a kitchen which had been built at 
the expense of Cardinal Wolsey in 1527. In- 

82 



Oxford as I See It 



credible though it may seem, they have no other 
place to cook in than this and are compelled to 
use it to-day. On the day when I saw this 
kitchen, four cooks were busy roasting an ox 
whole for the students' lunch: this at least is 
what I presumed they were doing from the size 
of the fire-place used, but it may not have been 
an ox; perhaps it was a cow. On a huge table, 
twelve feet by six and made of slabs of wood 
five inches thick, two other cooks were rolling 
out a game pie. I estimated it as measuring 
three feet across. In this rude way, unchanged 
since the time of Henry VIII, the unhappy Ox- 
ford students are fed. I could not help con- 
trasting it with the cosy little boarding houses 
on Cottage Grove Avenue where I used to eat 
when I was a student at Chicago, or the charm- 
ing little basement dining-rooms of the stu- 
dents' boarding houses in Toronto. But then, 
of course, Henry VIII never lived in Toronto. 
The same lack of a building-fund necessitates 
the Oxford students, living in the Identical old 
boarding houses they had in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. Technically they are 

83 



My Discovery of England 



called "quadrangles," ^'closes" and "rooms"; 
but I am so broken In to the usage of my 
student days that I can't help calling them 
boarding houses. In many of these the old 
stairway has been worn down by the feet of ten 
generations of students: the windows have lit- 
tle latticed panes: there are old names carved 
here and there upon the stone, and a thick 
growth of ivy covers the walls. The boarding 
house at St. John's College dates from 1509, 
the one at Christ Church from the same period. 
A few hundred thousand pounds would suffice 
to replace these old buildings with neat steel 
and brick structures like the normal school at 
Schenectady, N. Y., or the Peel Street High 
School at Montreal. But nothing Is done. A 
movement was indeed attempted last autumn 
towards removing the Ivy from the walls, but 
the result was unsatisfactory and they are put- 
ting it back. Any one could have told them be- 
forehand that the mere removal of the ivy 
would not brighten Oxford up, unless at the 
same time one cleared the stones of the old in- 

84 



Oxford as I See It 



scriptions, put in steel fire-escapes, and in fact 
brought the boarding houses up to date. 

But Henry VIII being dead, nothing was 
done. Yet in spite of its dilapidated build- 
ings and its lack of fire-escapes, ventilation, 
sanitation, and up-to-date kitchen facilities, I 
persist in my assertion that I believe that Ox- 
ford, in its way, is the greatest university in the 
world. I am aware that this is an extreme state- 
ment and needs explanation. Oxford is much 
smaller in numbers, for example, than the State 
University of Minnesota, and is much poorer. 
It has, or had till yesterday, fewer students than 
the University of Toronto. To mention Oxford 
beside the 26,000 students of Columbia Uni- 
versity sounds ridiculous. In point of money, 
the 39,000,000 dollar endowment of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, and the $35,000,000 one 
of Columbia, and the $43,000,000 of Harvard 
seem to leave Oxford nowhere. Yet the pecu- 
liar thing is that it is not nowhere. By 
some queer process of its own it seems to get 
there every time. It was therefore of the very 

8s 



My Discovery of England 



greatest Interest to me, as a profound scholar, 
to try to investigate just how this peculiar ex- 
cellence of Oxford arises. 

It can hardly be due to anything in the 
curriculum or programme of studies. Indeed, to 
any one accustomed to the best models of a uni- 
versity curriculum as it flourishes in the United 
States and Canada, the programme of studies is 
frankly quite laughable. There Is less Applied 
Science In the place than would be found with 
us In a theological college. Hardly a single 
professor at Oxford would recognise a dynamo 
if he met It In broad daylight. The Oxford 
student learns nothing of chemistry, physics, 
heat, plumbing, electric wiring, gas-fitting or 
the use of a blow-torch. Any American col- 
lege student can run a motor car, take a gaso- 
line engine to pieces, fix a washer on a kitchen 
tap, mend a broken electric bell, and give an 
expert opinion on what has gone wrong with 
the furnace. It is these things indeed which 
stamp him as a college man, and occasion a very 
pardonable pride in the minds of his parents. 

86 



Oxford as I See It 



But in all these things the Oxford student is the 
merest amateur. 

This is bad enough. But after all one might 
say this is only the mechanical side of education. 
True: but one searches in vain in the Oxford 
curriculum for any adequate recognition of the 
higher and more cultured studies. Strange 
though it seems to us on this side of the At- 
lantic, there are no courses at Oxford in 
Housekeeping, or in Salesmanship, or in Ad- 
vertising, or on Comparative Religion, or on 
the influence of the Press. There are no lec- 
tures whatever on Human Behaviour, on Al- 
truism, on Egotism, or on the Play of Wild 
Animals. Apparently, the Oxford student 
does not learn these things. This cuts him off 
from a great deal of the larger culture of our 
side of the Atlantic. "What are you studying 
this year?" I once asked a fourth year student 
at one of our great colleges. "I am electing 
Salesmanship and Religion," he answered. 
Here was a young man whose training was 
destined inevitably to turn him into a moral 

87 



My Discovery of England 



business man: either that or nothing. At Ox- 
ford Salesmanship is not taught and Religion 
takes the feeble form of the New Testament. 
The more one looks at these things the more 
amazing it becomes that Oxford can produce 
any results at all. 

The effect of the comparison is heightened 
by the peculiar position occupied at Oxford by 
the professors* lectures. In the colleges of 
Canada and the United States the lectures are 
supposed to be a really necessary and useful 
part of the student's training. Again and again 
I have heard the graduates of my own college 
assert that they had got as much, or nearly 
as much, out of the lectures at college as out 
of athletics or the Greek letter society or the 
Banjo and Mandolin Club. In short, with us 
the lectures form a real part of the college life. 
At Oxford it is not so. The lectures, I under- 
stand, are given and may even be taken. But 
they are quite worthless and are not supposed 
to have anything much to do with the develop- 
ment of the student's mind. "The lectures 
here," said a Canadian student to me, "are 

88 



Oxford as I See It 



punk.'* I appealed to another student to know 
if this was so. '*I don't know whether I'd call 
them exactly punk," he answered, "but they're 
certainly rotten." Other judgments were that 
the lectures were of no importance: that no- 
body took them: that they don't matter: that 
you can take them if you like : that they do you 
no harm. 

It appears further that the professors them- 
selves are not keen on their lectures. If the 
lectures are called for they give them; if not, 
the professor's feelings are not hurt. He 
merely waits and rests his brain until in some 
later year the students call for his lectures. 
There are men at Oxford who have rested their 
brains this way for over thirty years: the ac- 
cumulated brain power thus dammed up is said 
to be colossal. 

I understand that the key to this mystery 
is found in the operations of the person called 
the tutor. It is from him, or rather with him, 
that the students learn all that they know : one 
and all are agreed on that. Yet it is a little 
odd to know just how he does it. "We go 

89 



My Discovery of England 



over to his rooms," said one student, "and he 
just lights a pipe and talks to us." "We sit 
round with him," said another, "and he simply 
smokes and goes over our exercises with us." 
From this and other evidence I gather that 
what an Oxford tutor does is to get a little 
group of students together and smoke at them. 
Men who have been systematically smoked at 
for four years turn into ripe scholars. If any- 
body doubts this, let him go to Oxford and he 
can see the thing actually in operation. A well- 
smoked man speaks and writes English with a 
grace that can be acquired in no other way. 

In what was said above, I seem to have been 
directing criticism against the Oxford profes- 
sors as such: but I have no intention of doing 
so. For the Oxford professor and his whole 
manner of being I have nothing but a profound 
respect. There is indeed the greatest differ- 
ence between the modern up-to-date American 
idea of a professor and the English type. But 
even with us in older days, in the bygone time 
when such people as Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow were professors, one found the English 

90 



Oxford as I See It 



idea; a professor was supposed to be a venera- 
ble kind of person, with snow-white whiskers 
reaching to his stomach. He was expected to 
moon around the campus oblivious of the world 
around him. If you nodded to him he failed 
to see you. Of money he knew nothing; of 
business, far less. He was, as his trustees were 
proud to say of him, "a child." 

On the other hand he contained within him 
a reservoir of learning of such depth as to be 
practically bottomless. None of this learn- 
ing was supposed to be of any material or com- 
mercial benefit to anybody. Its use was in sav- 
ing the soul and enlarging the mind. 

At the head of such a group of professors 
was one whose beard was even whiter and 
longer, whose absence of mind was even still 
greater, and whose knowledge of money, busi- 
ness, and practical affairs was below zero. 
Him they made the president. 

All this is changed in America. A univer- 
sity professor is now a busy, hustling person, 
approximating as closely to a business man as 
he can do it. It is on the business man that he 

01 



My Discovery of England 



models himself. He has a little place that he 
calls his "office," with a typewriter machine 
and a stenographer. Here he sits and dic- 
tates letters, beginning after the best business 
models, "in re yours of the eighth ult., would 
say, etc., etc.'' He writes these letters to 
students, to his fellow professors, to the presi- 
dent, indeed to any people who will let him 
write to them. The number of letters that he 
writes each month is duly counted and set to 
his credit. If he writes enough he will get a 
reputation as an "executive," and big things 
may happen to him. He may even be asked 
to step out of the college and take a post as 
an "executive" in a soap company or an ad- 
vertising firm. The man, in short, is a "hus- 
tler," an "advertiser" whose highest aim is to 
be a "live-wire." If he is not, he will presently 
be dismissed, or, to use the business term, 
be "let go," by a board of trustees who are 
themselves hustlers and live-wires. As to the 
professor's soul, he no longer needs to think 
of it as it has been handed over along with all 
the others to a Board of Censors. 

92 



Oxford as I See It 



The American professor deals with his 
students according to his lights. It is his busi- 
ness to chase them along over a prescribed 
ground at a prescribed pace like a flock of 
sheep. They all go humping together over the 
hurdles with the professor chasing them with 
a set of "tests" and "recitations," "marks" and 
"attendances," the whole apparatus obviously 
copied from the time-clock of the business 
man's factory. This process is what is called 
"showing results." The pace set is necessarily 
that of the slowest, and thus results in what I 
have heard Mr. Edward Beatty describe as 
the "convoy system of education." 

In my own opinion, reached after fifty-two 
years of profound reflection, this system con- 
tains in itself the seeds of destruction. It puts 
a premium on dulness and a penalty on genius. 
It circumscribes that latitude of mind which is 
the real spirit of learning. If we persist in it 
we shall presently find that true learning will 
fly away from our universities and will take 
rest wherever some individual and enquiring 
mind can mark out its path for itself. 

93 



My Discovery of England 



Now the principal reason why I am led to 
admire Oxford is that the place is little touched 
as yet by the measuring of "results," and by this 
passion for visible and provable "efficiency." 
The whole system at Oxford is such as to put 
a premium on genius and to let mediocrity and 
dulness go their way. On the dull student 
Oxford, after a proper lapse of time, confers 
a degree which means nothing more than that 
he lived and breathed at Oxford and kept out 
of jail. This for many students is as much as 
society can expect. But for the gifted students 
Oxford offers great opportunities. There is 
no question of his hanging back till the last 
sheep has jumped over the fence. He need 
wait for no one. He may move forward as 
fast as he likes, following the bent of his 
genius. If he has in him any ability beyond 
that of the common herd, his tutor, interested 
In his studies, will smoke at him until he kindles 
him into a flame. For the tutor's soul is not 
harassed by herding dull students, with dismis- 
sal hanging by a thread over his head in the 

94 



Oxford as I See It 



class room. The American professor has no 
time to be interested in a clever student. He 
has time to be interested in his "deportment," 
his letter-writing, his executive work, and his 
organising ability and his hope of promotion 
to a soap factory. But with that his mind is 
exhausted. The student of genius merely 
means to him a student who gives no trouble, 
who passes all his "tests," and is present at 
all his "recitations." Such a student also, if 
he can be trained to be a hustler and an ad- 
vertiser, will undoubtedly "make good." But 
beyond that the professor does not think of 
him. The everlasting principle of equality has 
inserted itself in a place where it has no right 
to be, and where inequality is the breath of life. 
American or Canadian college trustees would 
be horrified at the notion of professors who 
apparently do no work, give few or no lectures 
and draw their pay merely for existing. Yet 
these are really the only kind of professors 
worth having, — I mean, men who can be 
trusted with a vague general mission in life, 

95 



My Discovery of England 



with a salary guaranteed at least till their death, 
and a sphere of duties entrusted solely to their 
own consciences and the promptings of their 
own desires. Such men are rare, but a single 
one of them, when found, is worth ten "execu- 
tives" and a dozen "organisers." 

The excellence cf Oxford, then, as I see it, 
lies in the peculiar vagueness of the organisa- 
tion of its work. It starts from the assump- 
tion that the professor is a really learned man 
whose sole interest lies in his own sphere : and 
that a student, or at least the only student with 
whom the university cares to reckon seriously. 
Is a young man who desires to know. This is 
an ancient mediaeval attitude long since buried 
in more up-to-date places under successive 
strata of compulsory education, state teaching, 
the democratisation of knowledge and the sub- 
stitution of the shadow for the substance, and 
the casket for the gem. No doubt, in newer 
places the thing has got to be so. Higher edu- 
cation in America flourishes chiefly as a quali- 
fication for entrance into a money-making pro- 

96 



Oxford as I See It 



fesslon, and not as a thing in itself. But in 
Oxford one can still see the surviving outline 
of a nobler type of structure and a higher in- 
spiration. 

I do not mean to say, however, that my 
judgment of Oxford is one undiluted stream of 
praise. In one respect at least I think that 
Oxford has fallen away from the high ideals 
of the Middle Ages. I refer to the fact that 
it admits women students to its studies. In the 
Middle Ages women were regarded with a 
peculiar chivalry long since lost. It was taken 
for granted that their brains were too delicately 
poised to allow them to learn anything. It 
was presumed that their minds were so ex- 
quisitely hung that intellectual effort might dis- 
turb them. The present age has gone to the 
other extreme: and this is seen nowhere more 
than in the crowding of women into colleges 
originally designed for men. Oxford, I regret 
to find, has not stood out against this change. 

To a profound scholar like myself, the pres- 
ence of these young women, many of them most 

97 



My Discovery of England 



attractive, flittering up and down the streets 
of Oxford in their caps and gowns, is very dis- 
tressing. 

Who is to blame for this and how they first 
got in I do not know. But I understand that 
they first of all built a private college of their 
own close to Oxford, and then edged themselves 
in foot by foot. If this is so they only fol- 
lowed up the precedent of the recognised 
method in use in America. When an American 
college is established, the women go and build 
a college of their own overlooking the grounds. 
Then they put on becoming caps and gowns 
and stand and look over the fence at the college 
athletics. The male undergraduates, who were 
originally and by nature a hardy lot, were not 
easily disturbed. But inevitably some of the 
senior trustees fell in love with the first year 
girls and became convinced that coeducation 
was a noble cause. American statistics show 
that between 1880 and 1900 the number of 
trustees and senior professors who married 
girl undergraduates or who wanted to do so 
reached a percentage of, — I forget the exact 

98 



Oxford as I See It 



percentage; it was either a hundred or a little 
over. 

I don't know just what happened at Oxford 
but presumably something of the sort took 
place. In any case the women are now all over 
the place. They attend the college lectures, 
they row in a boat, and they perambulate the 
High Street. They are even offering a serious 
competition against the men. Last year they 
carried off the ping-pong championship and 
took the chancellor's prize for needlework, 
while in music, cooking and millinery the men 
are said to be nowhere. 

There is no doubt that unless Oxford puts 
the women out while there is yet time, they will 
overrun the whole university. What this 
means to the progress of learning few can tell 
and those who know are afraid to say. 

Cambridge University, I am glad to see, still 
sets its face sternly against this Innovation. I 
am reluctant to count any superiority in the 
University of Cambridge. Having twice vis- 
ited Oxford, having made the place a subject 
of profound study for many hours at a time, 

99 



My Discovery of England 



having twice addressed its undergraduates, and 
having stayed at the Mitre Hotel, I consider 
myself an Oxford man. But I must admit 
that Cambridge has chosen the wiser part. 

Last autumn, while I was in London on my 
voyage of discovery, a vote was taken at Cam- 
bridge to see if the women who have already 
a private college nearby, should be admitted to 
the university. They were triumphantly shut 
out; and as a fit and proper sign of enthusiasm 
the undergraduates went over in a body and 
knocked down the gates of the women's 
college. I know that it is a terrible thing to 
say that any one approved of this. All the 
London papers came out with headings that 
read, — Are Our Undergraduates Turning 
Into Baboons? and so on. The Manchester 
Guardian draped its pages in black and even the 
London Morning Post was afraid to take bold 
ground in the matter. But I do know also that 
there was a great deal of secret chuckling and 
jubilation in the London clubs. Nothing was 
expressed openly. The men of England have 
been too terrorised by the women for that. 

100 



Oxford as I See It 



But In safe corners of the club, out of earshot 
of the waiters and away from casual strangers, 
little groups of elderly men chuckled quietly 
together. "Knocked down their gates, eh?" 
said the wicked old men to one another, and 
then whispered guiltily behind an uplifted hand, 
"Serve 'em right." Nobody dared to say any- 
thing outside. If they had some one would 
have got up and asked a question in the House 
of Commons. When this is done all England 
falls flat upon its face. 

But for my part when I heard of the Cam- 
bridge vote, I felt as Lord Chatham did when 
he said in parliament, "Sir, I rejoice that Amer- 
ica has resisted." For I have long harboured 
views of my own upon the higher education of 
women. In these days, however, it requires 
no little hardihood to utter a single word of 
criticism against it. It is like throwing half a 
brick through the glass roof of a conservatory. 
It is bound to make trouble. Let me hasten, 
therefore, to say that I believe most heartily 
in the higher education of women; in fact, the 
higher the better. The only question to my 

lOI 



My Discovery of England 



mind is: What is ''higher education" and how 
do you get it? With which goes the second- 
ary enquiry, What is a woman and is she just 
the same as a man? I know that it sounds a 
terrible thing to say in these days, but I don't 
believe she is. 

Let me say also t-hat when I speak of coedu- 
cation I speak of what I know. I was coedu- 
cated myself some thirty-five years ago, at the 
very beginning of the thing. I learned my 
Greek alongside of a bevy of beauty on the 
opposite benches that mashed up the irregular 
verbs for us very badly. Incidentally, those 
girls are all married long since, and all the 
Greek they know now you could put under a 
thimble. But of that presently. 

I have had further experience as well. I 
spent three years In the graduate school of 
Chicago, where coeducational girls were as 
thick as autumn leaves, — -and some thicker. 
And as a college professor at McGIU Univer- 
sity In Montreal, I have taught mingled classes 
of men and women for twenty years. 

On the basis of which experience I say with 

102 



Oxford as I See It 



assurance that the thing is a mistake and has 
nothing to recommend it but its relative cheap- 
ness. Let me emphasise this last point and 
have done with it. Coeducation is of course a 
great economy. To teach ten men and ten 
women in a single class of twenty costs only 
half as much as to teach two classes. Where 
economy must rule, then, the thing has got to be. 
But where the discussion turns not on what is 
cheapest, but on what is best, then the case is 
entirely different. 

The fundamental trouble is that men and 
women are different creatures, with different 
minds and different aptitudes and different 
paths in life. There is no need to raise here 
the question of which is superior and which is 
inferior (though I think, the Lord help me, I 
know the answer to that too). The point lies 
in the fact that they are different. 

But the mad passion for equality has masked 
this obvious fact. When women began to de- 
mand, quite rightly, a share in higher educa- 
tion, they took for granted that they wanted 
the same curriculum as the men. They never 

103 



My Discovery of England 



stopped to ask whether their aptitudes were 
not in various directions higher and better than 
those of the men, and whether it might not be 
better for their sex to cultivate the things which 
were best suited to their minds. Let me be 
more explicit. In all that goes with physical 
and mathematical science, women, on the aver- 
age, are far below the standard of men. There 
are, of course, exceptions. But they prove 
nothing. It is no use to quote to me the case 
of some brilliant girl who stood first in physics 
at Cornell. That's nothing. There is an ele- 
phant in the zoo that can count up to ten, yet 
I refuse to reckon myself his inferior. 

Tabulated results spread over years, and the 
actual experience of those who teach show that 
in the whole domain of mathematics and phys- 
ics women are outclassed. At McGill the girls 
of our first year have wept over their failures 
in elementary physics these twenty-five years. 
It Is time that some one dried their tears 
and took away the subject. 

But, in any case, examination tests are never 
the whole story. To those who know, a writ- 

104 



Oxford as I See It 



ten examination is far from being a true cri- 
terion of capacity. It demands too much of 
mere memory, imitativeness, and the insidious 
willingness to absorb other people's ideas. 
Parrots and crows would do admirably in ex- 
aminations. Indeed, the colleges are full of 
them. 

But take, on the other hand, all that goes 
with the aesthetic side of education, with imag- 
inative literature and the cult of beauty. Here 
women are, or at least ought to be, the su- 
periors of men. Women were In primitive 
times the first story-tellers. They are still so 
at the cradle side. The original college woman 
was the witch, with her incantations and her 
prophecies and the glow of her bright imag- 
ination, and if brutal men of duller brains had 
not burned it out of her, she would be incanting 
still. To my thinking, we need more witches 
In the colleges and less physics. 

I have seen such young witches myself, — if 
I may keep the word: I like it, — in colleges 
such as Wellesley in Massachusetts and Bryn 
Mawr In Pennsylvania, where there isn't a man 

105 



My Discovery of England 



allowed within the three mile limit. To my 
mind, they do infinitely better thus by them- 
selves. They are freer, less restrained. They 
discuss things openly in their classes; they lift 
up their voices, and they speak, whereas a girl 
In such a place as McGill, with men all about 
her, sits for four years as silent as a frog full 
of shot. 

But there is a deeper trouble still. The 
careers of the men and women who go to col- 
lege together are necessarily different, and the 
preparation is all aimed at the man's career. 
The men are going to be lawyers, doctors, en- 
gineers, business men, and politicians. And 
the women are not. 

There is no use pretending about it. It may 
sound an awful thing to say, but the women are 
going to be married. That is, and always has 
been, their career; and, what is more, they 
know it; and even at college, while they are 
studying algebra and political economy, they 
have their eye on it sideways all the time. The 
plain fact is that, after a girl has spent four 

io6 



Oxford as I See It 



years of her time and a great deal of her par- 
ents' money in equipping herself for a career 
that she is never going to have, the wretched 
creature goes and gets married, and in a few 
years she has forgotten which is the hypotenuse 
of a right-angled triangle, and she doesn't care. 
She has much better things to think of. 

At this point some one will shriek: '*But 
surely, even for marriage, isn't it right that a 
girl should have a college education?" To 
which I hasten to answer: most assuredly. I 
freely admit that a girl who knows algebra, or 
once knew it, is a far more charming compan- 
ion and a nobler wife and mother than a girl 
who doesn't know x from y. But the point 
is this: Does the higher education that fits a 
man to be a lawyer also fit a person to be a 
wife and mother? Or, in other words, is a 
lawyer a wife and mother? I say he is not. 
Granted that a girl is to spend four years in 
time and four thousand dollars in money in go- 
ing to college, why train her for a career that 
she is never going to adopt? Why not give 

107 



My Discovery of England 



her an education that will have a meaning and 
a harmony with the real life that she is to 
follow ? 

For example, suppose that during her four 
years every girl lucky enough to get a higher 
education spent at least six months of it in the 
training and discipline of a hospital as a nurse. 
There is more education and character making 
in that than in a whole bucketful of algebra. 

But no, the woman insists on snatching her 
share of an education designed by Erasmus or 
William of Wykeham or William of Occam 
for the creation of scholars and lawyers; and 
when later on in her home there is a sudden 
sickness or accident, and the life or death of 
those nearest to her hangs upon skill and 
knowledge and a trained fortitude in emer- 
gency, she must needs send in all haste for a 
hired woman to fill the place that she herself 
has never learned to occupy. 

But I am not here trying to elaborate a whole 
curriculum. I am only trying to indicate that 
higher education for the man is one thing, for 
the woman another. Nor do I deny the fact that 

io8 



Oxford as I See It 



women have got to earn their living. Their 
higher education must enable them to do that. 
They cannot all marry on their graduation 
day. But that is no great matter. No scheme 
of education that any one is likely to devise will 
fail in this respect. 

The positions that they hold as teachers or 
civil servants they would fill all the better if 
their education were fitted to their wants. 

Some few, a small minority, really and truly 
**have a career," — husbandless and childless, — 
In which the sacrifice is great and the honour to 
them, perhaps, all the higher. And others no 
doubt dream of a career in which a husband 
and a group of blossoming children are carried 
as an appendage to a busy life at the bar or 
on the platform. But all such are the mere 
minority, so small as to make no difference to 
the general argument. 

But there — I have written quite enough to 
make plenty of trouble except perhaps at Cam- 
bridge University. So I return with relief to 
my general study of Oxford. Viewing the sit- 
uation as a whole, I am led then to the conclu- 

109 



My Discovery of England 



sion that there must be something in the life of 
Oxford itself that makes for higher learning. 
Smoked at by his tutor, fed in Henry VIII's 
kitchen, and sleeping in a tangle of ivy, the 
student evidently gets something not easily ob- 
tained in America. And the more I reflect on 
the matter the more I am convinced that it is 
the sleeping in the ivy that does it. How dif- 
ferent it is from student life as I remember it ! 

When I was a student at the University of 
Toronto thirty years ago, I lived, — from start 
to finish, — in seventeen different boarding 
houses. As far as I am aware these houses 
have not, or not yet, been marked with tablets. 
But they are still to be found in the vicinity of 
McCaul and Darcy, and St. Patrick Streets. 
Any one who doubts the truth of what I have 
to say may go and look at them. 

I was not alone in the nomadic life that I 
led. There were hundreds of us drifting about 
in this fashion from one melancholy habitation 
to another. We lived as a rule two or three 
in a house, sometimes alone. We dined in the 
basement. We always had beef, done up in 

no 



Oxford as I See It 



some way after It was dead, and there were 
always soda biscuits on the table. They used 
to have a brand of soda biscuits in those days 
in the Toronto boarding houses that I have not 
seen since. They were better than dog bis- 
cuits but with not so much snap. My con- 
temporaries will all remember them. A great 
many of the leading barristers and professional 
men of Toronto were fed on them. 

In the life we led we had practically no op- 
portunities for association on a large scale, no 
common rooms, no reading rooms, nothing. 
We never saw the magazines, — personally I 
didn't even know the names of them. The 
only interchange of ideas we ever got was by 
going over to the Casr Howell Hotel on Uni- 
versity Avenue and interchanging them there. 

I mention these melancholy details not for 
their own sake but merely to emphasise the 
point that when I speak of students' dormi- 
tories, and the larger life which they offer, 
I speak of what I know. 

If we had had at Toronto, when I was a 
student, the kind of dormitories and dormitory 

III 



My Discovery of England 



life that they have at Oxford, I don't think I 
would ever have graduated. I'd have been 
there still. The trouble is that the universities 
on our Continent are only just waking up to 
the idea of what a university should mean. 
They were, very largely, instituted and organ- 
ised with the idea that a university was a place 
where young men were sent to absorb the con- 
tents of books and to listen to lectures in the 
class rooms. The student was pictured as a 
pallid creature, burning what was called the 
"midnight oil," his wan face bent over his desk. 
If you wanted to do something for him you 
gave him a book: if you wanted to do some- 
thing really large on his behalf you gave him 
a whole basketful of them. If you wanted to 
go still further and be a benefactor to the col- 
lege at large, you endowed a competitive schol- 
arship and set two or more pallid students 
working themselves to death to get it. 

The real thing for the student is the life and 
environment that surrounds him. All that he 
really learns he learns, in a sense, by the active 
operation of his own intellect and not as the 

112 



Oxford as I See It 



passive recipient of lectures. And for this 
active operation what he really needs most is 
the continued and intimate contact with his fel- 
lows. Students must live together and eat to- 
gether, talk and smoke together. Experience 
shows that that is how their minds really grow. 
And they must live together in a rational and 
comfortable way. They must eat in a big din- 
ing room or hall, with oak beams across the 
ceiling, and the stained glass in the windows, 
and with a shield or tablet here or there upon 
the wall, to remind them between times of the 
men who went before them and left a name 
worthy of the memory of the college. If a 
student is to get from his college what it ought 
to give him, a college dormitory, with the life 
in common that it brings. Is his absolute right. 
A university that fails to- give It to him Is 
cheating him. 

If I were founding a university — and I say 
It with all the seriousness of which I am capa- 
ble — I would found first a smoking room; 
then when I had a little more money In hand 
I would found a dormitory; then after that, or 

113 



My Discovery of England 



more probably with it, a decent reading room 
and a library. After that, if I still had money 
over that I couldn't use, I would hire a pro- 
fessor and get some text books. 

This chapter has sounded In the most part 
like a continuous eulogy of Oxford with but 
little In favour of our American colleges. I 
turn therefore with pleasure to the more con- 
genial task of showing what is wrong with Ox- 
ford and with the English university system 
generally, and the aspect in which our American 
universities far excell the British. 

The point Is that Henry VIII is dead. The 
English are so proud of what Henry VIII and 
the benefactors of earlier centuries did for the 
universities that they forget the present. 
There is little or nothing in England to com- 
pare with the magnificent generosity of indi- 
viduals, provinces and states, which Is building 
up the colleges of the United States and Can- 
ada. There used to be. But by some strange 
confusion of thought the English people admire 
the noble gifts of Cardinal Wolsey and Henry 
VIII and Queen Margaret, and do not realise 

114 



Oxford as I See It 



that the Carnegles and Rockefellers and the 
William Macdonalds are the Cardinal Wolseys 
of to-day. The University of Chicago was 
founded upon oil. McGill University rests 
largely on a basis of tobacco. In America the 
world of commerce and business levies on itself 
a noble tribute in favour of the higher learn- 
ing. In England, with a few conspicuous ex- 
ceptions, such as that at Bristol, there is little 
of the sort. The feudal families are content 
with what their remote ancestors have done: 
they do not try to emulate it in any great degree. 
In the long run this must count. Of all the 
various reforms that are talked of at Oxford, 
and of all the imitations of American methods 
that are suggested, the only one worth while, 
to my thinking, is to capture a few millionaires, 
give them honorary degrees at a million pounds 
sterling apiece, and tell them to imagine that 
they are Henry the Eighth. I give Oxford 
warning that if this is not done the place will 
not last another two centuries. 



"S 



VI 

THE BRITISH AND THE 
AMERICAN PRESS 



VI . — The British and the 
American Press 

THE only paper from which a man can 
really get the news of the world in a 
shape that he can understand is the 
newspaper of his own ''home town." 
For me, unless I can have the Montreal Gazette 
at my breakfast, and the Montreal Star at my 
dinner, I don't really know what is happening. 
In the same way I have seen a man from the 
south of Scotland settle down to read the 
Dumfries Chronicle with a deep sigh of sat- 
isfaction: and a man from Burlington, Ver- 
mont, pick up the Burlington Eagle and study 
the foreign news in it as the only way of getting 
at what was really happening in France and 
Germany. 

The reason is, I suppose, that there are dif- 
ferent ways of serving up the news and we each 

119 



My Discovery of England 



^get used to our own. Some people like the 
news fed to them gently: others like it thrown 
at them In a bombshell: some prefer it to be 
made as little of as possible; they want it min- 
imised : others want the maximum. 

This is where the greatest difference lies be- 
tween the British newspapers and those of the 
United States and Canada. With us in Amer- 
ica the great thing is to get the news and shout 
it at the reader; in England they get the news 
and then break it to him as gently as possible. 
Hence the big headings, the bold type, and the 
double columns of the American paper, and 
the small headings and the general air of quiet 
and respectability of the English Press. 

It Is quite beside the question to ask which 
is the better. Neither Is. They are different 
things: that's all. The English newspaper is 
designed to be read quietly, propped up against 
the sugar bowl of a man eating a slow break- 
fast In a quiet corner of a club, or by a retired 
banker seated In a leather chair nearly asleep, 
or by a country vicar sitting in a wicker chair 
lunder a pergola. The American paper Is for 

1 20 



British and American Press 

reading by a man hanging on the straps of a 
clattering subway express, by a man eating 
at a lunch counter, by a man standing on one 
leg, by a man getting a two-minute shave, or 
by a man about to have his teeth drawn by a 
dentist. 

In other words, there is a difference of at- 
mosphere. It is not merely in the type and the 
lettering, it is a difference in the way the news 
is treated and the kind of words that are used. 
In America we love such words as "gun-men'^ 
and "joy-ride'' and "death-cell" : in England 
they prefer "person of doubtful character" and 
"motor travelling at excessive speed" and 
"corridor No. 6." If a milk-waggon collides 
in the street with a coal-cart, we write that a 
"life-waggon" has struck a "death-cart." We 
call a murderer a "thug" or a "gun-man" or a 
"yeg-man." In England they simply call him 
"the accused who Is a grocer's assistant in 
Houndsditch." That designation would knock 
any decent murder story to pieces. 

Hence comes the great difference between 
the American "lead" or opening sentence of 

121 



My Discovery of England 



the article, and the English method of com- 
mencement. In the American paper the idea 
is that the reader is so busy that he must first 
be offered the news in one gulp. After that if 
he likes it he can go on and eat some more of 
it. So the opening sentence must give the 
whole thing. Thus, suppose that a leading 
member of the United States Congress has com- 
mitted suicide. This Is the way in which the 
American reporter deals with it. 

"Seated In his room at the Grand Hotel with 
his carpet slippers on his feet and his body 
wrapped In a blue dressing-gown with pink in- 
sertions, after writing a letter of farewell to 
his wife and emptying a bottle of Scotch whisky 
in which he exonerated her from all culpability 
in his death, Congressman Ahasuerus P. TIgg 
was found by night-watchman, Henry T. 
Smith, while making his rounds as usual with 
four bullets In his stomach." 

Now let us suppose that a leading member 
of the House of Commons In England had 
done the same thing. Here Is the way it would 
be written up In a first-class London newspaper. 

122 



British and American Press 

The heading would be Home and Generai; 
Intelligence. That is inserted so as to keep 
the reader soothed and quiet and is no doubt 
thought better than the American heading Bug- 
house Congressman Blows Out Brains ini 
Hotel. After the heading Home and Gen- 
eral Intelligence the English paper runs 
the subheading Incident at the Grand 
Hotel. The reader still doesn't know what 
happened; he isn't meant to. Then the article 
begins like this: 

*Thc Grand Hotel, which is situated at the 
comer of Millbank and Victoria Streets, was 
the scene last night of a distressing incident." 

''What Is It?" thinks the reader. 'The 
hotel Itself, which Is an old Georgian structure 
dating probably from about 1750, is a quiet 
establishment. Its clientele mainly drawn from 
business men In the cattle-droving and distillery 
business from South Wales." 

"What happened?" thinks the reader. 

"Its cuisine has long been famous for the 
excellence of Its boiled shrimps." 

"What happened?" 

123 



My Discovery of England 



"While the hotel itself is also known as the 
meeting place of the Surbiton Harmonic Soci- 
ety and other associations.'* 

*What happened?" 

"Among the more prominent of the guests 
of the hotel has been numbered during the pres- 
ent Parliamentary session Mr. Llewylln Ap. 
Jones, M. P., for South Llanfydd. Mr. Jones 
apparently came to his room last night at about 
ten P.M., and put on his carpet slippers and 
his blue dressing gown. He then seems to have 
gone to the cupboard and taken from it a 
whisky bottle which however proved to be 
empty. The unhappy gentleman then appar- 
ently went to bed. . . .'* 

At that point the American reader probably 
stops reading, thinking that he has heard it all. 
The unhappy man found that the bottle was 
empty and went to bed: very natural: and the 
affair very properly called a "distressing in- 
cident": quite right. But the trained English 
reader would know that there was more to 
come and that the air of quiet was only as- 
sumed, and he would read on and on until at 

124 



British and American Press 

last the tragic Interest heightened, the four 
shots were fired, with a good long pause after 
each for discussion of the path of the bullet 
through Mr. Ap. Jones. 

I am not saying that either the American way 
or the British way Is the better. They are just 
two different ways, that's all. But the result 
Is that anybody from the United States or Can- 
ada reading the English papers gets the Im- 
pression that nothing Is happening: and an Eng- 
lish reader of our newspapers with us gets the 
idea that the whole place Is In a tumult. 

When I was in London I used always, m 
glancing at the morning papers, to get a first 
impression that the whole world was almost 
asleep. There was, for example, a heading 
called Indian Intelligence that showed, 
on close examination, that two thousand Par- 
sees had died of the blue plague, that a pow- 
der boat had blown up at Bombay, that 
some one had thrown a couple of bombs at one 
of the provincial governors, and that four 
thousand agitators had been sentenced to 
twenty years hard labour each. But the whole 

125 



My Discovery of England 



thing was just called "Indian Intelligence." 
Similarly, there was a little item called, "Our 
Chinese Correspondent." That one explained 
ten lines down, in very small type, that a hun- 
dred thousand Chinese had been drowned in a 
flood. And there was another little item 
labelled ''Foreign Gossip," under which was 
mentioned that the Pope was dead, and that 
the President of Paraguay had been assassi- 
nated. 

In short, I got the impression that I was 
living in an easy drowsy world, as no doubt 
the editor meant me to. It was only when the 
Montreal Star arrived by post that I felt that 
the world was still revolving pretty rapidly on 
Its axis and that there was still something doing. 

As with the world news so it is with the 
minor events of ordinary life, — ^birth, death, 
marriage, accidents, crime. Let me give an 
illustration. Suppose that in a suburb of Lon- 
don a housemaid has endeavoured to poison 
her employer's family by putting a drug In the 
coffee. Now on our side of the water we 
should write that little Incident up in a way to 

126 



British and American Press 

give It life, and put headings over it that would 
capture the reader's attention in a minute. We 
should begin it thus : 

Pretty Parlor Maid 

Deals Death-drink 

TO Clubman's Family 

The English reader would ask at once, how 
do we know that the parlor maid is pretty? 
We don^t. But our artistic sense tells us that 
she ought to be. Pretty parlor maids are the 
only ones we take any interest in: if an ugly 
parlor maid poisoned her employer's family 
we should hang her. Then again, the English 
reader would say, how do we know that the 
man is a clubman? Have we ascertained this 
fact definitely, and if so, of what club or clubs 
Is he a member? Well, we don't know, ex- 
cept in so far as the thing Is self-evident. Any 
man who has romance enough In his life to be 
poisoned by a pretty housemaid ought to be 
in a club. That's the place for him. In fact, 
with us the word club man doesn't necessarily 

127 



My Discovery of England 



mean a man who belongs to a club: It Is defined 
as a man who is arrested In a gambling den, or 
fined for speeding a motor or who shoots an- 
other person in a hotel corridor. Therefore 
this man must be a club man. Having settled 
the heading, we go on with the text : 

"Brooding over love troubles which she has 
hitherto refused to divulge under the most 
grilling fusillade of rapid-fire questions shot 
at her by the best brains of the New York police 
force, Miss Mary De Forrest, a handsome 
brunette thirty-six inches around the hips, em- 
ployed as a parlor maid In the residence of 
Mr. Spudd Bung, a well-known club man forty- 
two Inches around the chest, was arrested yes- 
terday by the flying squad of the emergency 
police after having, so It Is alleged, put four 
ounces of alleged picrate of potash Into the al- 
leged coffee of her employer's family's alleged 
breakfast at their residence on Hudson Heights 
in the most fashionable quarter of the metropo- 
lis. Dr. Slink, the leading fashionable prac- 
titioner of the neighbourhood who was imme- 

128 



British and American Press 

diately summoned said that but for his own 
extraordinary dexterity and promptness the 
death of the whole family, if not of the entire 
entourage, was a certainty. The magistrate in 
committing Miss De Forrest for trial took occa- 
sion to enlarge upon her youth and attractive 
appearance: he castigated the moving pictures 
severely and said that he held them together 
with the public school system and the present 
method of doing the hair, directly responsible 
for the crimes of the kind alleged.'* 

Now when you read this over you begin to 
feel that something bigr has happened. Here 
is a man like Dr. Slink, all quivering with 
promptness and dexterity. Here is an in- 
serted picture, a photograph, a brick house in 
a row marked with a cross (+) and labelled 
*'The Bung Residence as it appeared imme- 
diately after the alleged outrage." It isn't 
really. It is just a photograph that we use for 
this sort of thing and have grown to like. It is 
called sometimes: — :"Residence of Senator 
Borah" or *'Scene of the Recent Spiritualistic 

129 



My Discovery of England 



Manifestations^' or anything of the sort. As 
long as it is marked with a cross ( + ) the 
reader will look at it with interest. 

In other words we make something out of an 
occurrence like this. It doesn't matter if it all 
fades out afterwards when it appears that 
Mary De Forrest merely put ground allspice 
into the coffee in mistake for powdered sugar 
and that the family didn't drink it anyway. 
The reader has already turned to other mys- 
teries. 

But contrast the pitifully tame way in which 
the same event is written up in England. Here 
it is: 

Suburban Item 

"Yesterday at the police court of Surbiton- 
on-Thames Mary Forrester, a servant in the 
employ of Mr. S. Bung was taken into custody 
on a charge of having put a noxious prepara- 
tion, possibly poison, into the coffee of her em- 
ployer's family. The young woman was re- 
manded for a week." 

Look at that. Mary Forrester a servant? 

130 



British and American Press 

How wide was she round the chest? It 
doesn't say. Mr. S. Bung? Of what club was 
he a member? None, apparently. Then who 
cares if he is poisoned? And "the young 
woman !" What a way to speak of a decent girl 
who never did any other harm than to poison 
a club man. And the English magistrate ! 
What a tame part he must have played: his 
name indeed doesn't occur at all: apparently 
he didn't enlarge on the girl's good looks, or 
"comment on her attractive appearance," or 
anything. I don't suppose that he even asked 
Mary Forrester out to lunch with him. 

Notice also that, according to the English 
way of writing the thing up, as soon as the girl 
was remanded for a week the incident is closed. 
The English reporter doesn't apparently know 
enough to follow Miss De Forrest to her home 
(called "the De Forrest Residence" and 
marked with a cross, -f). The American re- 
porter would make certain to supplement what 
went above with further Information of this 
fashion. "Miss De Forrest when seen later 
at her own home by a representative of The 

131 



My Discovery of England 



Eagle said that she regretted very much having 
been put to the necessity of poisoning Mr. 
Bung. She had In the personal sense nothing 
against Mr. Bung and apart from poisoning 
him she had every respect for Mr. Bung. Miss 
De Forrest, who talks admirably on a variety 
of topics, expressed herself as warmly in favour 
of the League of Nations and as a devotee of 
the short ballot and proportional representa- 
tion.'* 

Any American reader who studies the Eng- 
lish Press comes upon these wasted opportuni- 
ties every day. There are Indeed certain jour- 
nals of a newer type which are doing their best 
to imitate us. But they don't really get It yet. 
They use type up to about one inch and after 
that they get afraid. 

I hope that In describing the spirit of the 
English Press I do not seem to be writing with 
any personal bitterness. I admit that there 
might be a certain reason for such a bias. Dur- 
ing my stay In England I was most anxious to 
appear as a contributor to some of the leading 
papers. This is, with the English, a thing that 

132 



British and American Press 

always adds prestige. To be able to call one- 
self a ^'contributor'' to the Times or to Punch 
or the Morning Post or the Spectator, is a high 
honour. I have met these "contributors'' all 
over the British Empire. Some, I admit, look 
strange. An ancient wreck in the back bar of 
an Ontario tavern (ancient regime) has told 
me that he was a contributor to the Times : the 
janitor of the building where I lived admits 
that he is a contributor to Punch: a man ar- 
rested in Bristol for vagrancy while I was in 
England pleaded that he was a contributor 
to the Spectator. In fact, it is an honour that 
everybody seems to be able to get but me. 

I had often tried before I went to England 
to contribute to the great English newspapers. 
I had never succeeded. But I hoped that while 
in England itself the very propinquity of the 
atmosphere, I mean the very contiguity of the 
surroundings, would render the attempt easier. 
I tried and I failed. My failure was all the 
more ignominious in that I had very direct per- 
sonal encouragement. "By all means," said 
the editor of the London Times, "do some- 

133 



My Discovery of England 



thing for us while you are here. Best of all, 
do something in a political way; that's rather 
our special line." I had already received al- 
most an Identical encouragement from the Lon- 
don Morning Post, and In a more qualified way 
from the Manchester Guardian, In short, suc- 
cess seemed easy. 

I decided therefore to take some simple polit- 
ical event of the peculiar kind that always 
makes a stir in English politics and write it 
up for these English papers. To simplify mat- 
ters I thought it better to use one and the same 
Incident and write It up in three different ways 
and get paid for It three times. All of those 
who write for the Press will understand the 
motive at once. I waited therefore and 
watched the papers to see If anything interest- 
ing might happen to the Ahkoond of Swat or 
the Sandjak of Novl Bazar or any other native 
potentate. Within a couple of days I got what 
I wanted in the following Item, which I need 
hardly say Is taken word for word from the 
Press despatches : 

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British and American Press 

**Perini, via Bombay, News comes by mes- 
senger that the Shriek of Kowfat who has been 
living under the convention of 1898 has vio- 
lated the modus operandi. He is said to have 
torn off his suspenders, dipped himself in oil 
and proclaimed a Jehad, The situation is 
critical." 

Everybody who knows England knows that 
this is just the kind of news that the English 
love. On our side of the Atlantic we should 
be bothered by the fact that we did not know 
where Kowfat is, nor what was the convention 
of 1898. They are not. They just take it 
for granted that Kowfat is one of the many 
thousand places that they "own,'* somewhere 
In the outer darkness. They have so many 
Kowfats that they cannot keep track of them. 

I knew therefore that everybody would be 
interested In any discussion of what was at once 
called "the Kowfat Crisis" and I wrote It up. 
I resisted the temptation to begin after the 
'American fashion, "Shriek sheds suspenders," 
and suited the writing, as I thought, to the mar- 



My Discovery of England 



ket I was writing for. I wrote up the incident 
for the Morning Post after the following 
fashion : 

*'The news from Kowfat affords one more In- 
stance of a painful back-down on the part of 
the Government. Our policy of spineless su- 
pineness is now reaping its inevitable reward. 
To us there is only one thing to be done. If 
the Shriek has torn off his suspenders he must 
be made to put them on again. We have al- 
ways held that where the imperial prestige of 
this country is concerned there is no room for 
hesitation. In the present instance our pres- 
tige is at stake: the matter involves our repu- 
tation in the eyes of the surrounding natives, 
the Bantu Hottentots, the Negritos, the Dwarf 
Men of East Abyssinia, and the Dog Men of 
Darfur. What will they think of us? If we 
fail In this crisis their notion of us will fall fifty 
per cent. In our opinion this country cannot 
stand a fifty per cent drop in the estimation of 
the Dog Men. The time is one that demands 
action. An ultimatum should be sent at once 
to the Shriek of Kowfat. If he has one al- 

136 



British and American Press 

ready we should send him another. He should 
be made at once to put on his suspenders. The 
oil must be scraped off him, and he must be told 
plainly that if a pup like him tries to start a 
Jehad he will have to deal with the British 
Navy. We call the Shriek a pup in no sense 
of belittling him as our imperial ally but be- 
cause we consider that the present is no time 
for half words and we do not regard pup as 
half a word. Events such as the present, rock- 
ing the Empire to its base, make one long for 
the spacious days of a Salisbury or a Queen 
Elizabeth, or an Alfred the Great or a Julius 
Caesar. We doubt whether the present Cab- 
inet is in this class." 

Not to lose any time in the coming and go- 
ing of the mail, always a serious thought for the 
contributor to the Press waiting for a cheque, 
I sent another editorial on the same topic 
to the Manchester Guardian, It ran as fol- 
lows : 

''The action of the Shriek of Kowfat In pro- 
claiming a Jehad against us Is one that amply 
justifies all that we have said editorially since 

137 



My Discovery of England 



Jeremy Bentham died. We have always held 
that the only way to deal with a Mohammedan 
potentate like the Shriek is to treat him like a 
Christian. The Khalifate of Kowfat at pres- 
ent buys its whole supply of cotton piece goods 
in our market and pays cash. The Shriek, who 
is a man of enlightenment, has consistently up- 
held the principles of Free Trade. Not only 
are our exports of cotton piece goods, bibles, 
rum, and beads constantly increasing, but they 
are more than offset by our importation from 
Kowfat of ivory, rubber, gold, and oil. In 
short, we have never seen the principles of Free 
Trade better illustrated. The Shriek, it is now 
reported, refuses to wear the braces presented 
to him by our envoy at the time of his corona- 
tion five years ago. He is said to have thrown 
them into the mud. But we have no reason to 
suppose that this is meant as a blow at our 
prestige. It may be that after five years of 
use the little pulleys of the braces no longer 
work properly. We have ourselves in our per- 
sonal life known instances of this, and can speak 

138 



British and American Press 

of the sense of irritation occasioned. Even we 
have thrown on the floor ours. And in any 
case, as we have often reminded our readers, 
what is prestige? If any one wants to hit us, 
let him hit us right there. We regard a blow 
at our trade as far more deadly than a blow at 
our prestige. ■ 

"The situation as we see it demands imme- 
diate reparation on our part. The principal 
grievance of the Shriek arises from the exist- 
ence of our fort and garrison on the Kowfat 
river. Our proper policy Is to knock down the 
fort, and either remove the garrison or give It 
to the Shriek. We are convinced that as soon 
as the Shriek realises that we are prepared to 
treat him In the proper Christian spirit, he will 
at once respond with true Mohammedan gen- 
erosity. 

**We have further to remember that In what 
we do we are being observed by the neighbour- 
ing tribes, the Negritos, the Dwarf Men, and 
the Dog Men of Darfur. These are not only 
shrewd observers but substantial customers. 

139 



My Discovery of England 



The Dwarf Men at present buy all their cotton 
on the Manchester market and the Dog Men 
depend on us for their soap. 

"The present crisis is one in which the nation 
needs statesmanship and a broad outlook upon 
the world. In the existing situation we need 
not the duplicity of a Machiavelli, but the com- 
manding prescience of a Gladstone or an Alfred 
the Great, or a Julius Caesar. Luckily we 
have exactly this type of man at the head of 
affairs." 

After completing the above I set to work 
without delay on a similar exercise for the 
London Times. The special excellence of the 
Times, as everybody knows is its fulness of in- 
formation. For generations past the Times 
has commanded a peculiar minuteness of knowl- 
edge about all parts of the Empire. It is the 
proud boast of this great journal that to what- 
ever far away, outlandish part of the Empire 
you may go, you will always find a correspond- 
ent of the Times looking for something to do. 
It is said that the present proprietor has laid 
it down as his maxim, "I don't want men who 

140 



British and American Press 

think; I want men who know." The arrange- 
ments for thinking are made separately. 

Incidentally I may say that I had personal 
opportunities while I was in England of real- 
ising that the reputation of the Times staff for 
the possession of information is well founded. 
Dining one night with some members of the 
staff, I happened to mention Saskatchewan. 
One of the editors at the other end of the table 
looked up at the mention of the name. "Sas- 
katchewan," he said, "ah, yes; that's not far 
from Alberta, Is it?" and then turned quietly to 
his food again. When I remind the reader 
that Saskatchewan is only half an inch from 
iAlberta he may judge of the nicety of the 
knowledge Involved. Having all this in mind, 
I recast the editorial and sent it to the London 
Times as follows: 

"The news that the Sultan of Kowfat has 
thrown away his suspenders renders it of In- 
terest to indicate the exact spot where he has 
thrown them. (See map). Kowfat, lying as 
the reader knows, on the Kowfat River, oc- 
cupies the hinterland between the back end of 

141 



My Discovery of England 



south-west Somaliland and the east, that is to 
say, the west, bank of Lake P^schu. It thus 
forms an enclave between the Dog Men of 
Darfur and the Negritos of T'chk. The in- 
habitants of Kowfat are a coloured race three 
quarters negroid and more than three quarters 
tabloid. 

"As a solution of the present difficulty, the 
first thing required in our opinion is to send out 
a boundary commission to delineate more ex- 
actly still just where Kowfat is. After that an 
ethnographical survey might be completed." 

• • • * • 

It was a matter not only of concern but of 
surprise to me that not one of the three con- 
tributions recited above was accepted by the 
English Press. The Morning Post complained 
that my editorial was not firm enough in tone, 
the Guardian that it was not humane enough, 
the Times that I had left out the latitude and 
longitude always expected by their readers. 

I thought it not worth while to bother to 
revise the articles as I had meantime conceived 
the idea that the same material might be used 

142 



British and American Press 

m the most delightfully amusing way as the 
basis of a poem for Punch. Everybody knows 
the kind of verses that are contributed to 
Punch by Sir Owen Seaman and Mr. Charles 
Graves and men of that sort. And everybody 
has been struck, as I have, by the extraordinary 
easiness of the performance. All that one 
needs is to get some odd little incident, such as 
the revolt of the Sultan of Kowfat, make up 
an amusing title, and then string the verses to- 
gether in such a way as to make rhymes with all 
the odd words that come into the narrative. 
In fact, the thing is ease itself. 

I therefore saw a glorious chance with the 
Sultan of Kowfat. Indeed, I fairly chuckled 
to myself when I thought what amusing rhymes 
could be made with "Negritos,'* "modus oper- 
andi" and "Dog Men of Darfur." I can 
scarcely imagine anything more excruciatingly 
funny than the rhymes which can be made with 
them. And as for the title, bringing in the 
word Kowfat or some play upon it, the thing 
is perfectly obvious. The idea amused me so 
much that I set to work at the poem at once. 

143 



My Discovery of England 



I am sorry to say that I failed to complete it. 
Not that I couldn't have done so, given time; 
I am quite certain that if I had had about two 
years I could have done it. The main structure 
of the poem, however, is here and I give it for 
what it is worth. Even as it is it strikes me 
as extraordinarily good. Here it is : 

Title 
Kowfat 

Verse One 

I I 

modus operandi ; 



Negritos : 
.. P'shu. 



Verse Two 



Khalifate; 

Dog Men of Darfur: 
T'chk. 

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British and American Press 

Excellent little thing, Isn't it? All it needs 
is the rhymes. As far as it goes it has just 
exactly the ease and the sweep required. And 
if some one will tell me how Owen Seaman and 
those people get the rest of the ease and the 
sweep I'll be glad to put it in. 

One further experiment of the same sort I 
made with the English Press In another direc- 
tion and met again with failure. If there is 
one paper in the world for which I have respect 
and — If I may say it — an affection, it Is the 
London Spectator, I suppose that I am only 
one of thousands and thousands of people who 
feel that way. Why under the circumstances 
the Spectator failed to publish my letter I can- 
not say. I wanted no money for it: I only 
wanted the honour of seeing it inserted beside 
the letter written from the Rectory, Hops, 
Hants, or the Shrubbery, Potts, Shrops, — I 
mean from one of those places where the read- 
ers of the Spectator live. I thought too that 
my letter had just the right touch. However, 
they wouldn't take It: something wrong with 
it somewhere, I suppose. This is it: 

145 



My Discovery of England 



'Xo the Editor, 

The Spectator, 
London, England. 
Dear Sir, 

Your correspondence of last week contained 
such Interesting Information In regard to the 
appearance of the first cowslip In Kensington 
Common that I trust that I may, without fa- 
tiguing your readers to the point of saturation, 
narrate a somewhat similar and I think, sir, an 
equally Interesting experience of my own. 
While passing through Lambeth Gardens yes- 
terday towards the hour of dusk I observed a 
crow with one leg sitting beside the duck-pond 
and apparently lost In thought. There was 
no doubt that the bird was of the species pulex 
hibiscus, an order which Is becoming singularly 
rare In the vicinity of the metropolis. Indeed, 
so far as I am aware, the species has not 
been seen In London since 1680. I may say 
that on recognising the bird I drew as near as 
I could, keeping myself behind the shrubbery, 
but the pulex hibiscus which apparently caught 

146 



British and American Press 

a brief glimpse of my face uttered a cry of dis- 
tress and flew away. 

I am, sir, 
Believe me, 
yours, sir, 

O. Y. Botherwithit 
(Ret'd Major Burmese Army.); 
Distressed by these repeated failures, I sank 
back to a lower level of English literary work, 
the puzzle department. For some reason or 
other the English delight in puzzles. It is, I 
think, a part of the peculiar school-boy pedantry 
which is the reverse side of their literary gen- 
ius. I speak with a certain bitterness because 
in puzzle work I met with no success what- 
ever. My solutions were never acknowledged, 
never paid for, in fact they were ignored. But 
I append two or three of them here, with apol- 
ogies to the editors of the Strand and other 
papers who should have had the honour of 
publishing them first. 



147 



My Discovery of England 

Puzzle I 

Can you fold a square piece of paper in 
such a way that with a single fold it forms 
a pentagon? 

My Solution: Yes, if I knew what a pen- 
tagon was. 

Puzzle II 

A and B agree to hold a walking match 
across an open meadow, each seeking the 
shortest line. A, walking from corner to 
corner, may be said to diangulate the hy- 
potenuse of the meadow. B, allowing 
for a slight rise in the ground, walks on an 
obese tabloid. Which wins? 

My Solution: Frankly, I don't know. 

Puzzle III 

(With apologies to the Strand,) 
A rope is passed over a pulley. It has 
a weight at one end and a monkey at the 
other. There is the same length of rope 
on either side and equilibrium is main- 
tained. The rope weighs four ounces per 

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British and American Press 

foot. The age of the monkey and the 
age of the monkey's mother together total 
four years. The weight of the monkey 
is as many pounds as the monkey's mother 
IS years old. The monkey's mother was 
twice as old as the monkey was when the 
monkey's mother was half as old as the 
monkey will be when the monkey is three 
times as old as the monkey's mother was 
when the monkey's mother was three times 
as old as the monkey. The weight of the 
rope with the weight at the end was half 
as much again as the difference in weight 
between the weight of the weight and the 
weight of the monkey. Now, what was 
the length of the rope? 

My Solution: I should think it would 
have to be a rope of a fairly good length. 

In only one department of English journal- 
ism have I met with a decided measure of suc- 
cess, — I refer to the juvenile competition de- 
partment. This is a sort of thing to which the 
English are especially addicted. As a really 

149 



My Discovery of England 



educated nation for whom good literature be- 
gins in the home they encourage in every way 
literary competitions among the young readers 
of their journals. At least half a dozen of the 
well-known London periodicals carry on this 
work. The prizes run all the way from one 
shilling to half a guinea and the competitions 
are generally open to all children from three to 
six years of age. It was here that I saw my 
open opportunity and seized it. I swept in 
prize after prize. As ^'Little Agatha" I got 
four shillings for the best description of Autumn 
in two lines, and one shilling for guessing cor- 
rectly the missing letters in Br-stol, Sh-f- 
FIELD, and H-LL. A lot of the competitors 
fell down on H-LL. I got six shillings for giv- 
ing the dates of the Norman Conquest, — 1492 
A.D., and the Crimean War of 1870. In 
short, the thing was easy. I might say that to 
enter these competitions one has to have a cer- 
tificate of age from a member of the clergy. 
But I know a lot of them. 



150 



VII 

BUSINESS IN ENGLAND. 
WANTED— MORE PROFITEERS 



VII.— Business in England. 
Wanted — More Profiteers 



IT is hardly necessary to say that so shrewd 
an observer as I am could not fail to be 
struck by the situation of business in Eng- 
land. Passing through the factory towns 
and noticing that no smoke came from the tall 
chimneys and that the doors of the factories 
were shut, I was led to the conclusion that they 
were closed. 

Observing that the streets of the Industrial 
centres were everywhere filled with idle men, 
I gathered that they were unemployed: and 
when I learned that the moving picture houses 
were full to the doors every day and that the 
concert halls, beer gardens, grand opera, and 
religious concerts were crowded to suffocation, 
I inferred that the country was suffering from 
an unparalleled depression. This diagnosis 

153 



My Discovery of England 



turned out to be absolutely correct. It has 
been freely estimated that at the time I refer 
to almost two million men were out of work. 
But It does not require government statistics 
to prove that in England at the present day 
everybody seems poor, just as in the United 
States everybody, to the eye of the visitor, 
seems to be rich. In England nobody seems 
to be able to afford anything: In the United 
States everybody seems to be able to afford 
everything. In England nobody smokes cigars : 
in America everybody does. On the English 
railways the first class carriages are empty: In 
the United States the "reserved drawing- 
rooms" are full. Poverty no doubt is only a 
relative matter: but a man whose Income used 
to be £10,000 a year and is now £5,000, is liv- 
ing In "reduced circumstances" : he feels himself 
just as poor as the man whose Income has been, 
cut from five thousand pounds to three, or from 
five hundred pounds to two. They are all in 
the same boat. What with the lowering of 
dividends and the raising of the Income tax, 
the closing of factories, feeding the unemployed 

154 



Business in England 



and trying to employ the unfed, things are in a 
bad way. 

The underlying cause is plain enough. The 
economic distress that the world suffers now 
is the inevitable consequence of the war. Ev- 
erybody knows that. But where the people 
differ is in regard to what is going to happen 
next, and what we must do about it. Here 
opinion takes a variety of forms. Some people 
blame it on the German mark: by permitting 
their mark to fall, the Germans, it is claimed, 
are taking away all the business from England ; 
the fall of the mark, by allowing the Germans 
to work harder and eat less than the English, 
is threatening to drive the English out of 
house and home: if the mark goes on falling 
still further the Germans will thereby outdo 
us also in music, literature and in religion. 
What has got to be done, therefore, is to force 
the Germans to lift the mark up again, and 
make them pay up their indemnity. 

Another more popular school of thought 
holds to an entirely contrary opinion. The 
whole trouble, they say, comes from the sad 



My Discovery of England 



collapse of Germany. These unhappy people, 
having been too busy for four years in destroy- 
ing valuable property in France and Belgium 
to pay attention to their home affairs, now find 
themselves collapsed : it is our first duty to pick 
them up again. The English should therefore 
take all the money they can find and give it to 
the Germans. By this means German trade 
and industry will revive to such an extent that 
the port of Hamburg will be its old bright self 
again and German waiters will reappear in the 
London hotels. After that everything will be 
all right. 

Speaking with all the modesty of an out- 
sider and a transient visitor, I give It as my 
opinion that the trouble is elsewhere. The 
danger of industrial collapse in England does 
not spring from what is happening In Germany 
but from what is happening In England Itself. 
England, like most of the other countries In 
the world. Is suffering from the over-extension 
of government and the decline of Individual 
self-help. For six generations Industry In 
England and America has flourished on indi- 

156 



Business in England 



vidual effort called out by the prospect of in- 
dividual gain. Every man acquired from his 
boyhood the idea that he must look after him- 
self. Morally, physically and financially that 
was the recognised way of getting on. The 
desire to make a fortune was regarded as a 
laudable ambition, a proper stimulus to effort. 
The ugly word ''profiteer'* had not yet been 
coined. There was no income tax to turn a 
man's pockets inside out and take away his sav- 
ings. The world was to the strong. 

Under the stimulus of this the wheels of in- 
dustry hummed. Factories covered the land. 
National production grew to a colossal size 
and the whole outer world seemed laid under 
a tribute to the great industry. As a system it 
was far from perfect. It contained in itself 
all kinds of gross injustices, demands that were 
too great, wages that were too small; in spite 
of the splendour of the foreground, poverty 
and destitution hovered behind the scenes. But 
such as it was, the system worked: and it was 
the only one that we knew. 

Or turn to another aspect of this same prin- 

157 



My Discovery of England 



ciple of self-help. The way to acquire knowl- 
edge in the early days was to buy a tallow can- 
dle and read a book after one^s day's work, as 
Benjamin Franklin read or Lincoln: and when 
the soul was stimulated to it, then the aspiring 
youth must save money, put himself to college, 
live on nothing, think much, and in the course 
of this starvation and effort become a learned 
man, with somehow a peculiar moral fibre in 
him not easily reproduced to-day. For to-day 
the candle is free and the college is free and the 
student has a ''Union" like the profiteer's club 
and a swimming-bath and a Drama League and 
a coeducational society at his elbow for which 
he buys Beauty Roses at five dollars a 
bunch. 

Or turn if one will to the moral side. The 
older way of being good was by much prayer 
and much effort of one's own soul. Now it is 
done by a Board of Censors. There is no 
need to fight sin by the power of the spirit: let 
the Board of Censors do it. They together 
with three or four kinds of Commissioners are 
supposed to keep sin at arm's length and to 

158 



Business in England 



supply a first class legislative guarantee of 
righteousness. As a short cut to morality and 
as a way of saving Individual effort our legis- 
latures are turning out morality legislation by 
the .bucketful. The legislature regulates our 
drink, It begins already to guard us against the 
deadly cigarette, it regulates here and there 
the length of our skirts, it safeguards our 
amusements and In two states of the American 
Union It even proposes to save us from the 
teaching of the Darwinian Theory of evolution. 
The, ancient prayer "Lead us not Into tempta- 
tion" Is passing out of date. The way to 
temptation is declared closed by Act of Parlia- 
ment and by amendment to the constitution of 
the United States. Yet oddly enough the 
moral tone of the world fails to respond. The 
world is apparently more full of thugs, hold-up 
men, yeg-men, bandits, motor-thieves, porch- 
climbers, spotters, spies and crooked policemen 
than it ever was; till it almost seems that the 
slow, old-fashioned method of an effort of the 
individual soul may be needed still before the 
world is made good. 

159 



My Discovery of England 



This vast new system, the system of leaning 
on the government, is spreading like a blight 
over England and America, and everywhere we 
suffer from it. Government, that in theory rep- 
resents a union of effort and a saving of force, 
sprawls like an octopus over the land. It has 
become like a dead weight upon us. Wherever 
it touches industry it cripples it. It runs rail- 
ways and makes a heavy deficit: it builds ships 
and loses money on them: it operates the ships 
and loses more money: it piles up taxes to fill 
the vacuum and when it has killed employment, 
opens a bureau of unemployment and issues a 
report on the depression of industry. 

Now, the only way to restore prosperity is 
to give back again to the individual the oppor- 
tunity to make money, to make lots of it, and 
when he has got it, to keep it. In spite of all 
the devastation of the war the raw assets of our 
globe are hardly touched. Here and there, as 
in parts of China and in England and in Bel- 
gium with about seven hundred people to 
the square mile, the world is fairly well filled 
up. There is standing room only. But there 

1 60 



Business in England 



are vast empty spaces still. Mesopotamia 
alone has millions of acres of potential wheat 
land with a few Arabs squatting on it. Canada 
could absorb easily half a million settlers a year 
for a generation to come. The most fertile 
part of the world, the valley of the Amazon, Is 
still untouched: so fertile is It that for tens of 
thousands of square miles It Is choked with 
trees, a mere tangle of life, defying all entry. 
The Idea of our humanity sadly walking the 
streets of Glasgow or sitting mournfully fishing 
on the piers of the Hudson, out of work, would 
be laughable if It were not for the pathos of it. 
The world is out of work for the simple rea- 
son that the world has killed the goose that 
laid the golden eggs of Industry. By taxation, 
by legislation, by popular sentiment all over the 
world, there has been a disparagement of the 
capitalist. And all over the world capital Is 
frightened. It goes and hides Itself In the form 
of an Investment In a victory bond, a thing that 
Is only a particular name for a debt, with no 
productive effort behind It and Indicating only 
a dead weight of taxes. There capital sits like 

i6i 



My Discovery of England 



a bull-frog hidden behind water-lilies, refusing 
to budge. 

Hence the way to restore prosperity is not 
to multiply government departments and gov- 
ernment expenditures, nor to appoint commis- 
sions and to pile up debts, but to start going 
again the machinery of bold productive effort. 
Take off all the excess profits taxes and the 
super-taxes on income and as much of the in- 
come tax itself as can be done by a wholesale 
dismissal of government employes and then 
give industry a mark to shoot at. What is 
needed now is not the multiplication of govern- 
ment reports, but corporate industry, the forma- 
tion of land companies, development companies, 
irrigation companies, any kind of corporation 
that will call out private capital from its hiding 
places, offer employment to millions and start 
the wheels moving again. If the promoters of 
such corporations presently earn huge fortunes 
for themselves society is none the worse: and 
in any case, humanity being what it is, they will 
hand back a vast part of what they have ac- 
quired in return for LL.D. degrees, or bits of 

162 



Business in England 



blue ribbon, or companionships of the Bath, or 
whatever kind of glass bead fits the f anq^ of the 
retired millionaire. 

The next thing to be done, then, is to "fire" 
the government officials and to bring back the 
profiteer. As to which officials are to be fired 
first it doesn't matter much. In England peo- 
ple have been greatly perturbed as to the use to 
be made of such instruments as the "Geddes 
Axe" : the edge of the axe of dismissal seems 
so terribly sharp. But there is no need to 
worry. If the edge of the axe is too sharp, hit 
with the back of it. 

As to the profiteer, bring him back. He Is 
really just the same person who a few years ago 
was called a Captain of Industry and an Em- 
pire Builder and a Nation Maker. It is the 
times that have changed, not the man. He Is 
there still, just as greedy and rapacious as ever, 
but no greedier: and we have just the same 
social need of his greed as a motive power in 
industry as we ever had, and indeed a worse 
need than before. 

We need him not only in business but in the 

163 



My Discovery of England 



whole setting of life, or if not him personally, 
we need the eager, selfish, but reliant spirit of 
the man who looks after himself and doesn't 
want to have a spoon-fed education and a gov- 
ernment job alternating with a government 
dole, and a set of morals framed for him by a 
Board of Censors. Bring back the profiteer: 
fetch him from the Riviera, from his country- 
place on the Hudson, or from whatever spot 
to which he has withdrawn with his tin box full 
of victory bonds. If need be, go and pick him 
out of the penitentiary, take the stripes off him 
and tell him to get busy again. Show him the 
map of the world and ask him to pick out a 
few likely spots. The trained greed of the ras- 
cal will find them in a moment. Then write 
him out a concession for coal in Asia Minor or 
oil in the Mackenzie Basin or for irrigation In 
Mesopotamia. The ink will hardly be dry on 
it before the capital will begin to flow in: it 
will come from all kinds of places whence the 
government could never coax it and where the 
tax-gatherer could never find it. Only promise 
that it is not going to be taxed out of existence 

164 



Business in England 



and the stream of capital which is being dried 
up in the sands of government mismanagement 
will flow into the hands of private industry like 
a river of gold. 

And incidentally, when the profiteer has fin- 
ished his work, we can always put him back 
into the penitentiary if we like. But we need 
him just now. 



165 



nil 

IS PROHIBITION COMING TO 
ENGLAND? 



VIII . — Is Prohibition Coming' to 
England? 

IN the United States and Canada the princi*- 
pal topic of polite conversation is now pro- 
hibition. At every dinner party the serving 
of the cocktails immediately introduces the 
subject: the rest of the dinner is enlivened 
throughout with the discussion of rum-runners, 
bootleggers, storage of liquor and the State 
constitution of New Jersey. Under this influ- 
ence all social and conversational values are 
shifted and rearranged. A "scholarly" man 
no longer means a man who can talk well on 
literary subjects but a man who understands the 
eighteenth amendment and can explain the legal 
difference between implementing statutes such 
as the Volstead Act and the underlying state 
legislation. A "scientist'* (invaluable in these 
conversations) is a man who can make clear the 

169 



My Discovery of England 



distinction between alcoholic percentages by 
bulk and by weight. And a "brilliant engineer" 
means a man who explains how to make home- 
brewed beer with a kick in it. Similarly, a 
"raconteur" means a man who has a fund of 
amusing stories about "bootleggers" and an 
"interesting traveller" means a man who has 
been to Havana and can explain how wet it is. 
Indeed, the whole conception of travel and of 
interest in foreign countries is now altered: as 
soon as any one mentions that he has been in 
a foreign country, all the company ask in one 
breath, "Is it dry?" The question "How is 
Samoa?" or "How is Turkey?" or "How is 
British Columbia?" no longer refers to the cli- 
mate or natural resources: it means "Is the 
place dry?" When such a question is asked 
and the answer is "It's wet," there is a deep 
groan all around the table. 

I understand that when the recent disarma- 
ment conference met at Washington just as the 
members were going to sit down at the table 
Monsieur Briand said to President Harding, 
"How dry is the United States, anyway?" And 

170 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

the whole assembly talked about it for half an 
hour. That was why the first newspaper bulle- 
tins merely said, "Conference exchanges cre- 
dentials.'' 

As a discoverer of England I therefore made 
it one of my chief cares to try to obtain ac- 
curate information of this topic. I was well 
aware that Immediately on my return to Can- 
ada the first question I would be asked would 
be "Is England going dry?" I realised that in 
any report I might make to the National Geo- 
graphical Society or to the Political Science As- 
sociation, the members of these bodies, being 
scholars, would want accurate information 
about the price of whiskey, the percentage of 
alcohol, and the hours of opening and closing 
the saloons. 

My first impression on the subject was, I 
must say, one of severe moral shock. Landing 
in England after spending the summer in On- 
tario, it seemed a terrible thing to see people 
openly drinking on an English train. On an 
Ontario train, as everybody knows, there is no 
way of taking a drink except by climbing up on 

171 



My Discovery of England 



the roof, lying flat on one's stomach, and taking 
a suck out of a flask. But In England in any 
dining car one actually sees a waiter approach a 
person dining and say, "Beer, sir, or wine?" 
This is done in broad daylight with no apparent 
sense of criminality or moral shame. Appalling 
though It sounds, bottled ale Is openly sold on 
the trains at twenty-five cents a bottle and dry 
sherry at eighteen cents a glass. 

When I first saw this I expected to see the 
waiter arrested on the spot. I looked around 
to see if there were any "spotters,'' detectives, 
or secret service men on the train. I antici- 
pated that the train conductor would appear 
and throw the waiter off the car. But then I 
realised that I was In England and that In 
the British Isles they still tolerate the consump- 
tion of alcohol. Indeed, I doubt If they are 
even aware that they are "consuming alcohol." 
Their Impression Is that they are drinking beer. 

At the beginning of my discussion I will 
therefore preface a few exact facts and statis- 
tics for the use of geographical societies, 
learned bodies and government commissions. 

172 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

pThe quantity of beer consumed In England in a 
given period is about 200,000,000 gallons. The 
life of a bottle of Scotch whiskey is seven sec- 
onds. The number of public houses, or "pubs," 
in the English countryside is one to every half 
mile. The percentage of the working classes 
drinking beer Is 125: the percentage of the 
class without work drinking beer is 200. 

Statistics like these do not, however, give a 
final answer to the question, "Is prohibition 
coming to England?" They merely show that 
it Is not there now. The question Itself will be 
answered In as many different ways as there are 
different kinds of people. Any prohibitionist 
will tell you that the coming of prohibition to 
England is as certain as the coming eclipse of 
the sun. But this is always so. It Is In human 
nature that people are Impressed by the cause 
they work in. I once knew a minister of the 
Scotch Church who took a voyage round the 
world: he said that the thing that Impressed 
him most was the growth of Presbyterlanism In 
Japan. No doubt It did. When the Orillla 
lacrosse team took their trip to Australia, they 

173 



My Discovery of England 



said on their return that lacrosse was spreading 
all over the world. In the same way there is 
said to be a spread all over the world of Chris- 
tian Science, proportional representation, mili- 
tarism, peace sentiment, barbarism, altruism, 
psychoanalysis and death from wood alcohol. 
They are what are called world movements. 

My own judgment in regard to prohibition 
in the British Isles Is this: In Scotland, prohi- 
bition is not coming: if anything, it is going. In 
Ireland, prohibition will only be introduced 
when they have run out of other forms of trou- 
ble. But in England I think that prohibition 
could easily come unless the English people 
realise where they are drifting and turn back. 
They are In the early stage of the movement 
already. 

Turning first to Scotland, there Is no fear, I 
say, that prohibition will be adopted there : and 
this from the simple reason that the Scotch do 
not drink. I have elsewhere alluded to the 
extraordinary misapprehension that exists in 
regard to the Scotch people and their sense of 
humour. I find a similar popular error in re- 

174 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

gard to the use of whiskey by the Scotch. Be- 
cause they manufacture the best whiskey In the 
world, the Scotch, In popular fancy, are often 
thought to be addicted to the drinking of it. 
This is purely a delusion. During the whole of 
two or three pleasant weeks spent in lecturing 
in Scotland, I never on any occasion saw whis- 
ky made use of as a beverage. I have seen 
people take it, of course, as a medicine, or as a 
precaution, or as a wise offset against a rather 
treacherous climate; but as a beverage, never. 
The manner and circumstance of their offer- 
ing whiskey to a stranger amply illustrates their 
point of view towards it. Thus at my first lec- 
ture In Glasgow where I was to appear before 
a large and fashionable audience, the chairman 
said to me In the committee room that he was 
afraid that there might be a draft on the plat- 
form. Here was a serious matter. For a lec- 
turer who has to earn his living by his occupa- 
tion, a draft on the platform is not a thing to 
be disregarded. It might kill him. Nor is it 
altogether safe for the chairman himself, a man 
already in middle life, to be exposed to a cur- 

175 



My Discovery of England 



rent of cold air. In this case, therefore, the 
chairman suggested that he thought it might 
be ''prudent'^ — that was his word, "prudent^' — 
if I should take a small drop of whiskey before 
encountering the draft. In return I told him 
that I could not think of his accompanying me 
to the platform unless he would let me insist 
on his taking a very reasonable precaution. 
Whiskey taken on these terms not only seems 
like a duty but it tastes better. 

In the same way I find that in Scotland it is 
very often necessary to take something to drink 
on purely meteorological grounds. The weather 
simply cannot be trusted. A man might find 
that on "going out into the weather'' he is 
overwhelmed by a heavy fog or an avalanche of 
snow or a driving storm of rain. In such a 
case a mere drop of whiskey might save his 
life. It would be folly not to take it. Again, — 
"coming in out of the weather" is a thing not 
to be trifled with. A person coming in unpre- 
pared and unprotected might be seized with 
angina pectoris or appendicitis and die upon the 
spot. No reasonable person would refuse the 

176 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

simple precaution of taking a small drop im- 
mediately after his entry. 

I find that, classified altogether, there are 
seventeen reasons advanced in Scotland for 
taking whiskey.. They run as follows : Reason 
one, because it is raining; Two, because it is 
not raining; Three, because you are just going 
out into the weather; Four, because you have 
just come in from the weather; Five, — no, I 
forget the ones that come after that. But I 
remember that reason number seventeen is "be- 
cause it canna do ye any harm." On the whole, 
reason seventeen is the best. 

Put In other words this means that the Scotch 
make use of whiskey with dignity and without 
shame : and they never call it alcohol. 

In England the case is different. Already 
the English are showing the first signs that in- 
dicate the' possible approach of prohibition. 
Already all over England there are weird regu- 
lations about the closing hours of the public 
houses. They open and close according to the 
varying regulations of the municipality. In 
some places they open at six in the morning, 

177 



My Discovery of England 



close down for an hour from nine till ten, open 
then till noon, shut for ten minutes, and so on ; 
In some places they are open in the morning 
and closed in the evening; in other places they 
are open In the evening and closed in the morn- 
ing. The ancient idea was that a wayside pub- 
lic house was a place of sustenance and comfort, 
a human need that might be wanted any hour. 
It was In the same class with the life boat or 
the emergency ambulance. Under the old com- 
mon law the Innkeeper must supply meat and 
drink at any hour. If he was asleep the travel- 
ler might wake him. And in those days meat 
and drink were regarded In the same light. 
Note how great the change is. In modern life 
In England there is nothing that you dare wake 
up a man for except gasoline. The mere fact 
that you need a drink Is no longer held to en- 
title you to break his rest. 

In London especially one feels the full force 
of the ^'closing" regulations. The bars open 
and shut at Intervals like daisies blinking at the 
sun. And like the flowers at evening they close 
their petals with the darkness. In London they 

178 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

have already adopted the deadly phrases of the 
prohibitionist, such as "alcohoP* and "liquor 
traffic" and so on: and already the "sale of 
spirits" stops absolutely at about eleven o'clock 
at night. 

This means that after theatre hours London 
is a "city of dreadful night." The people from 
the theatre scuttle to their homes. The lights 
are extinguished in the windows. The streets 
darken. Only a belated taxi still moves. At 
midnight the place is deserted. At i A.M., the 
lingering footfalls echo in the empty street. 
Here and there a restaurant in a fashionable 
street makes a poor pretence of keeping open 
for after theatre suppers. Odd people, the 
shivering wrecks of theatre parties, are huddled 
here and there. A gloomy waiter lays a sardine 
on the table. The guests charge their glasses 
with Perrier Water, Lithia Water, Citrate of 
Magnesia, or Bromo Seltzer. They eat the sar- 
dine and vanish into the night. Not even Osh- 
kosh, Wisconsin, or Middlebury, Vermont, is 
quieter than is the night life of London. It may 
no doubt seem a wise thing to go to bed early. 

179 



My Discovery of England 



But it is a terrible thing to go to bed early by; 
Act of Parliament. 

All of which means that the people of Eng- 
land are not facing the prohibition question 
fairly and squarely. If they see no harm in 
"consuming alcohol" they ought to say so and 
let their code of regulations reflect the fact. 
But the ^'closing" and "regulating" and "squeez- 
ing" of the "liquor traffic", without any out- 
spoken protest, means letting the whole case go 
by default. Under these circumstances an or- 
ganised and active minority can always win and 
impose its will upon the crowd. 

When I was in England I amused myself one 
day by writing an imaginary picture of what 
England will be like when the last stage is 
reached and London goes the way of New York 
and Chicago. I cast it in the form of a letter 
from an American prohibitionist in which he 
describes the final triumph of prohibition in 
England. With the permission of the reader 
I reproduce it here : 



1 80 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

THE ADVENT OF PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND 

^s written in the correspondence of 
an American visitor 

How glad I am that I have lived to see this 
wonderful reform of prohibition at last accom- 
plished in England. There is something so 
difficult about the British, so stolid, so hard to 
move. 

We tried everything in the great campaign 
that we made, and for ever so long it didn't 
seem to work. We had processions, just as we 
did at home in America, with great banners 
carried round bearing the Inscription : *'Do you 
want to save the boy?" But these people 
looked on and said, "Boy? Boy? What boy?" 
Our workers were almost disheartened. "Oh, 
sir," said one of them, an ex-barkeeper from 
Oklahoma, "It does seem so hard that we have 
total prohibition in the States and here they can 
get all the drink they want." And the good 
fellow broke down and sobbed. 

But at last it has come. After the most ter- 
rific efforts we managed to get this nation stam- 

i8i 



My Discovery of England 



peded, and for more than a month now Eng- 
land has been dry. I wish you could have 
witnessed the scenes, just like what we saw at 
home In America, when It was known that the 
bill had passed. The members of the House of 
Lords all stood up on their seats and yelled, 
*'Rah! Rah! Rah! Who's bone dry? We 
are!'* And the brewers and Innkeepers were 
emptying their barrels of beer into the Thames 
just as at St. Louis they emptied the beer into 
the Mississippi. 

I can't tell you with what pleasure I watched 
a group of members of the Athenaeum Club sit- 
ting on the bank of the Thames and opening 
bottles of champagne and pouring them Into 
the river. '*To think," said one of them to me, 
"that there was a time when I used to lap up 
a couple of quarts of this terrible stuff every 
evening." I got him to give me a few bottles 
as a souvenir, and I got some more souvenirs, 
whiskey and liqueurs, when the members of the 
Beefsteak Club were emptying out their cellars 
into Green Street; so when you come over, I 

182 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 



shall still be able, of course, to give you a 
drink. 

We have, as I said, been bone dry only a 
month, and yet already we are getting the same 
splendid results as in America. All the big 
dinners are now as refined and as elevating and 
the dinner speeches as long and as informal as 
they are in New York or Toronto. The other 
night at a dinner at the White Friars Club I 
heard Sir Owen Seaman speaking, not in that 
light futile way that he used to have, but quite 
differently. He talked for over an hour and a 
half on the State ownership of the Chinese Rail- 
way System, and I almost fancied myself back 
in Boston. 

And the working class too. It is just wonder- 
ful how prohibition has Increased their effi- 
ciency. In the old days they used to drop their 
work the moment the hour struck. Now they 
simply refuse to do so. I noticed yesterday a 
foreman In charge of a building operation vainly 
trying to call the bricklayers down. *'Come, 
come, gentlemen," he shouted, *'I must insist on 

183 



My Discovery of^ England 



your stopping for the night." But they just 
went on laying bricks faster than ever. 

Of course, as yet there are a few slight dif- 
ficulties and deficiencies, just as there are with 
us in America. We have had the same trouble 
with wood-alcohol (they call it methylated 
spirit here), with the same deplorable results. 
On some days the list of deaths is very serious, 
and in some cases we are losing men we can 
hardly spare. A great many of our leading 
actors — in fact, most of them — are dead. And 
there has been a heavy loss, too, among the 
literary class and in the legal profession. 

There was a very painful scene last week at 
the dinner of the Benchers of Gray's Inn. It 
seems that one of the chief justices had under- 
taken to make home brew for the Benchers, just 
as the people do on our side of the water. He 
got one of the waiters to fetch him some hops 
and three raw potatoes, a packet of yeast and 
some boiling water. In the end, four of the 
Benchers were carried out dead. But they are 
going to give them a public funeral in the 
Abbey. 

184 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

I regret to say that the death list in the Royal 
Navy is very heavy. Some of the best sailors 
are gone, and it is very difficult to keep ad- 
mirals. But I have tried to explain to the peo- 
ple here that these are merely the things that 
one must expect, and that, with a little patience, 
they will have bone-dry admirals and bone-dry 
statesmen just as good as the wet ones. Even 
the clergy can be dried up with firmness and 
perseverance. 

There was also a slight sensation here when 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought in his 
first appropriation for maintaining prohibition. 
From our point of view in America, it was 
modest enough. But these people are not used 
to it. The Chancellor merely asked for ten 
million pounds a month to begin on; he ex- 
plained that his task was heavy; he has to po- 
lice, not only the entire coast, but also the in- 
terior; for the Grampian Hills of Scotland 
alone he asked a million. There was a good 
deal of questioning in the House over these 
figures. The Chancellor was asked if he in- 
tended to keep a hired spy at every street corner 

185 



My Discovery of England 



in London. He answered, *^No, only on every 
other street.'^ He added also that every spy 
must wear a brass collar with his number. 

I must admit further, and I am sorry to have 
to tell you this, that now we have prohibition 
it is becoming increasingly difficult to get a 
drink. In fact, sometimes, especially in the 
very early morning, it is most inconvenient and 
almost impossible. The public houses being 
closed, it is necessary to go into a drug store — 
just as it is with us — and lean up against the 
counter and make a gurgling sound like apo- 
plexy. One often sees these apoplexy cases 
lined up four deep. 

But the people are finding substitutes, just as 
they do with us. There is a tremendous run on 
patent medicines, perfume, glue and nitric acid. 
It has been found that Shears' soap contains al- 
cohol, and one sees people everywhere eating 
cakes of it. The upper classes have taken to 
chewing tobacco very considerably, and the use 
of opium in the House of Lords has very 
greatly increased. 

But I don't want you to think that if you 

i86 



Is Prohibition Coming to England? 

come over here to see me, your private life will 
be in any way impaired or curtailed. I am glad 
to say that I have plenty of rich connections 
whose cellars are very amply stocked. The 
Duke of Blank is said to have 5,000 cases of 
Scotch whiskey, and I have managed to get a 
card of introduction to his butler. In fact you 
will find that, just as with us in America, the 
benefit of prohibition Is Intended to fall on the 
poorer classes. There is no desire to interfere 
with the rich. 



187 



IX 
WE HAVE WITH US TO-NIGHT' 



IX.—nVe Have With Us 
To-night" 

NOT only during my tour in England but 
for many years past it has been my lot 
to speak and to lecture in all sorts of 
places, under all sorts of circumstances 
and before all sorts of audiences. I say this, 
not in boastfulness, but in sorrow. Indeed, I 
only mention it to establish the fact that when 
I talk of lecturers and speakers, I talk of what 
I know. 

Few people realise how arduous and how 
disagreeable public lecturing is. The public sees 
the lecturer step out on to the platform in his 
little white waistcoat and his long tailed coat 
and with a false air of a conjurer about him, 
and they think him happy. After about ten 
minutes of his talk they are tired of him. Most 
people tire of a lecture in ten minutes; clever 

191 



My Discovery of England 



people can do It in five. Sensible people never 
go to lectures at all. But the people who do go 
to a lecture and who get tired of it, presently 
hold It as a sort of a grudge against the lec- 
turer personally. In reality his sufferings are 
worse than theirs. 

For my own part I always try to appear as 
happy as possible while I am lecturing. I take 
this to be part of the trade of anybody labelled 
a humourist and paid as such. I have no sym- 
pathy whatever with the Idea that a humourist 
ought to be a lugubrious person with a face 
stamped with melancholy. This is a cheap and 
elementary effect belonging to the level of a 
circus clown. The Image of "laughter shaking 
both his sldes^' Is the truer picture of comedy. 
Therefore, I say, I always try to appear cheer- 
ful at my lectures and even to laugh at my own 
jokes. Oddly enough this arouses a kind of 
resentment In some of the audience. *'Well, I 
will say," said a stern-looking woman who spoke 
to mc after one of my lectures, "you certainly 
do seem to enjoy your own fun." "Madam," 
I answered, "If I didn't, who would?" But in 

192 



''We Have with Us To-nighr 

reality the whole business of being a public lec- 
turer is one long variation of boredom and 
fatigue. So I propose to set down here some of 
the many trials which the lecturer has to bear. 

The first of the troubles which any one who 
begins giving public lectures meets at the very 
outset is the fact that the audience won't come 
to hear him. This happens invariably and con- 
stantly, and not through any fault or shortcom- 
ing of the speaker. 

I don't say that this happened very often to 
me in my tour in England. In nearly all cases 
I had crowded audiences: by dividing up the 
money that I received by the average number of 
people present to hear me I have calculated that 
they paid thirteen cents each. And my lectures 
are evidently worth thirteen cents. But at home 
in Canada I have very often tried the fatal ex- 
periment of lecturing for nothing: and in that 
case the audience simply won't come. A man, 
will turn out at night when he knows he is going 
to hear a first class thirteen cent lecture; but 
when the thing is given for nothing, why go to 
it? 

193 



My Discovery of England 



The city In which I live Is overrun with little 
societies, clubs and associations, always wanting 
to be addressed. So at least if Is In appearance. 
In reality the societies are composed of presi- 
dents, secretaries and officials, who want the 
consplcuousness of office, and a large list of 
other members who won't come to the meetings. 
For such an association, the Invited speaker who 
is to lecture for nothing prepares his lecture on 
*'Indo-GermanIc Factors In the Current of His- 
tory." If he Is a professor, he takes all the 
winter at It. You may drop in at his house at 
any time and his wife will tell you that he is 
"upstairs working on his lecture." If he comes 
down at all it is in carpet slippers and dressing 
gown. His mental vision of his meeting Is that 
of a huge gathering of keen people with Indo- 
Germanlc faces, hanging upon every word. 

Then comes the fated night. There are 
seventeen people present. The lecturer refuses 
to count them. He refers to them afterwards 
as "about a hundred." To this group he reads 
his paper on the Indo-Germanic Factor. It 

194 



''We Have with Us To-night" 

takes him two hours. When he is over the 
chairman invites discussion. There is no dis- 
cussion. The audience is willing to let the Indo- 
Germanic factors go unchallenged. Then the 
chairman makes this speech. He says : 

*'I am very sorry indeed that we should have 
had such a very poor 'turn out* to-night. I am 
sure that the members who were not here have 
missed a real treat in the delightful paper that 
we have listened to. I want to assure the lec- 
turer that if he comes to the Owl's Club again 
we can guarantee him next time a capacity audi- 
ence. And will any members, please, who 
haven't paid their dollar this winter, pay It 
either to me or to Mr. Sibley as they pass out." 

I have heard this speech (in the years when 
I have had to listen to it) so many times that 
I know It by heart. I have made the acquain- 
tance of the Owl's Club under so many names 
that I recognise it at once. I am aware that 
its members refuse to turn out in cold weather; 
that they do not turn out in wet weather; that 
when the weather is really fine, it is impossible 

195 



My Discovery of England 



to get them together; that the slightest counter- 
attraction, — a hockey match, a sacred concert, 
— goes to their heads at once. 

There was a time when I was the newly ap- 
pointed occupant of a college chair and had to 
address the Owl's Club. It Is a penalty that all 
new professors pay; and the Owls batten upon 
them like bats. It Is one of the compensations 
of age that I am free of the Owl's Club forever. 
But In the days when I still had to address them, 
I used to take It out of the Owls In a speech, 
delivered. In Imagination only and not out loud, 
to the assembled meeting of the seventeen Owls, 
after the chairman had made his concluding 
remarks. It ran as follows : 

"Gentlemen — If you are such, which I doubt. 
I realise that the paper which I have read on 
*'Was Hegel a deist?" has been an error. I 
spent all the winter on It and now I realise that 
not one of you pups know who Hegel was or 
what a deist Is. Never mind. It is over now, 
and I am glad. But just let me say this, only 
this, which won't keep you a minute. Your 
chairman has been good enough to say that if 

196 



''We Have with Us To-nighf 

I come again you will get together a capacity 
audience to hear me. Let me tell you that if 
your society waits for Its next meeting till I 
come to address you again, you will wait In- 
deed. In fact, gentlemen — I say it very 
frankly — It will be in another world." 

But I pass over the audience. Suppose there 
Is a real audience, and suppose them all duly 
gathered together. Then it becomes the busi- 
ness of that gloomy gentleman — facetiously re- 
ferred to in the newspaper reports as the 
"genial chairman'^ — to put the lecturer to the 
bad. In nine cases out of ten he can do so. 
Some chairmen, indeed, develop a great gift for 
It. Here are one or two examples from my own 
experience : 

''Ladies and gentlemen," said the chairman 
of a society In a little country town In Western 
Ontario, to which I had come as a paid (a very 
humbly paid) lecturer, "we have with us to- 
night a gentleman" (here he made an attempt 
to read my name on a card, failed to read it 
and put the card back In his pocket) — "a gen- 
tleman who Is to lecture to us on" (here he 

197 



My Discovery of England 



looked at his card again) — "on Ancient — ^An- 
cient, — I don^t very well see what it Is — Ancient 
— Britain? Thank you, on Ancient Britain. 
Now, this Is the first of our series of lectures 
for this winter. The last series, as you all 
know, was not a success. In fact, we came out 
at the end of the year with a deficit. So this 
year we are starting a new line and trying the 
experiment of cheaper talent." 

Here the chairman gracefully waved his 
hand toward me and there was a certain amount 
of applause. "Before I sit down," the chair- 
man added, *Td like to say that I am sorry to 
see such a poor turn-out to-night and to ask any 
of the members who haven't paid their dollar 
to pay It either to me or to Mr. Sibley as they 
pass out." 

Let anybody who knows the discomfiture of 
coming out before an audience on any terms, 
judge how it feels to crawl out in front of them 
labelled cheaper talent. 

Another charming way In which the chairman 
endeavours to put both the speaker for the eve- 
ning and the audience into an entirely good 

198 



''We Have with Us To-night" 

humour, is by reading out letters of regret from 
persons unable to be present. This, of course, 
is only for grand occasions when the speaker 
has been invited to come under very special 
auspices. It was my fate, not long ago, to "ap- 
pear" (this is the correct word to use in this 
connection) in this capacity when I was going 
about Canada trying to raise some money for 
the relief of the Belgians. I travelled in great 
glory with a pass on the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
way (not since extended: officials of the road 
kindly note this) and was most generously en- 
tertained wherever I went. 

It was, therefore, the business of the chair- 
man at such meetings as these to try and put a 
special distinction or cachet on the gathering. 
This is how it was done : 

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the chairman, 
rising from his seat on the platform with a lit- 
tle bundle of papers in his hand, "before I in- 
troduce the speaker of the evening, I have one 
or two items that I want to read to you." Here 
he rustles his papers and there is a deep hush 
in the hall while he selects one. "We had hoped 

199 



My Discovery of England 



to have with us to-night Sir Robert Borden, the 
Prime Minister of this Dominion. I have just 
received a telegram from Sir Robert in which 
he says that he will not be able to be here" 
{great applause). The chairman puts up his 
hand for silence, picks up another telegram and 
continues, "Our committee, ladies and gentle- 
men, telegraphed an invitation to Sir Wilfrid 
Laurier very cordially inviting him to be here 
to-night. I have here Sir Wilfrid's answer in 
which he says that he will not be able to be with 
us" {renewed applause). The chairman again 
puts up his hand for silence and goes on, pick- 
ing up one paper after another. "The Minister 
of Finance regrets that he will be unable to 
come" {applause) . "Mr. Rodolphe Lemieux 
{applause) will not be here {great applause) 
— the Mayor of Toronto {applause) is de- 
tained on business {wild applause) — the Angli- 
can Bishop of the Diocese {applause) — the 
Principal of the University College, Toronto 
{great applause) — the Minister of Education 
{applause) — none of these are coming." 
There is a great clapping of hands and en- 

200 



''We Have with Us To-nigh^ 

thusiasm, after which the meeting is called to 
order with a very distinct and palpable feeling 
that it is one of the most distinguished audiences 
ever gathered in the hall. 

Here is another experience of the same pe- 
riod while I was pursuing the same exalted pur- 
pose: I arrived in a little town in Eastern 
Ontario, and found to my horror that I was 
billed to "appear" in a church, I was supposed 
to give readings from my works, and my books 
are supposed to be of a humorous character. 
A church hardly seemed the right place to get 
funny in. I explained my difficulty to the pastor 
of the church, a very solemn looking man. He 
nodded his head, slowly and gravely, as he 
grasped my difficulty. *'I see," he said, "I see, 
but I think that I can introduce you to our peo- 
ple in such a way as to make that right." 

When the time came, he led me up on to the 
pulpit platform of the church, just beside and 
below the pulpit itself, with a reading desk and 
a big bible and a shaded light beside it. It was 
a big church, and the audience, sitting in half 
darkness, as is customary during a sermon, 

201 



My Discovery of England 



reached away back Into the gloom. The place 
was packed full and absolutely quiet. Then 
the chairman spoke: 

^'Dear friends," he said, ''I want you to un- 
derstand that It will be all right to laugh to- 
night. Let me hear you laugh heartily, laugh 
right out, just as much as ever you want to, be- 
cause" (and here his voice assumed the deep 
sepulchral tones of the preacher), — "when we 
think of the noble object for which the pro- 
fessor appears to-night, we may be assured that 
the Lord will forgive any one who will laugh 
at the professor." 

I am sorry to say, however, that none of the 
audience, even with the plenary absolution in 
advance, were inclined to take a chance on It. 

I recall In this same connection the chairman 
of a meeting at a certain town in Vermont. He 
represents the type of chairman who turns up 
so late at the meeting that the committee have 
no time to explain to him properly what the 
meeting Is about or who the speaker is. I no- 
ticed on this occasion that he Introduced me 
very guardedly by name (from a little card) 

202 



''We Have with Us To-night" 

and said nothing about the Belgians, and noth- 
ing about my being (supposed to be) a humour- 
ist. This last was a great error. The audience, 
for want of guidance, remained very silent and 
decorous, and well behaved during my talk. 
Then, somehow, at the end, while some one was 
moving a vote of thanks, the chairman discov- 
ered his error. So he tried to make it good. 
Just as the audience were getting up to put on 
their wraps, he rose, knocked on his desk and 
said: 

*'Just a minute, please, ladies and gentlemen, 
just a minute. I have just found out — I should 
have known it sooner, but I was late in coming 
to this meeting — that the speaker who has just 
addressed you has done so in behalf of the Bel- 
gian Relief Fund. I understand that he is a 
well-known Canadian humourist (ha! ha!) and 
I am sure that we have all been immensely 
amused (ha! ha!). He is giving his delightful 
talks (ha! ha!) — though I didn't know this till 
just this minute — for the Belgian Relief Fund, 
and he is giving his services for nothing. I 
am sure when we realise this, we shall all feel 

203 



My Discovery of England 



that it has been well worth while to come. I 
am only sorry that we didn't have a better turn 
out to-night. But I can assure the speaker that 
if he will come again, we shall guarantee him a 
capacity audience. And I may say, that if there 
are any members of this association who have 
not paid their dollar this season, they can give 
it either to myself or to Mr. Sibley as they pass 
out.** 

With the amount of accumulated experience 
that I had behind me I was naturally interested 
during my lecture in England in the chairmen 
who were to introduce me. I cannot help but 
feel that I have acquired a fine taste in chair- 
men. I know them just as other experts know 
old furniture and Pekinese dogs. The witty 
chairman, the prosy chairman, the solemn 
chairman, — I know them all. As soon as I 
shake hands with the chairman in the Commit- 
tee room I can tell exactly how he will act. 

There are certain types of chairmen who 
have so often been described and are so fa- 
miliar that it is not worth while to linger on 
them. Everybody knows the chairman who 

204 



''We Have with Us To-nighf 

says, — "Now, ladles and gentlemen, you have 
not come here to listen to me. So I will be very 
brief; in fact, I will confine my remarks to just 
one or two very short observations." He then 
proceeds to make observations for twenty-five 
minutes. At the end of it he remarks with 
charming simplicity, "Now I know that you are 
all impatient to hear the lecturer. ..." 

And everybody knows the chairman who 
comes to the meeting with a very imperfect 
knowledge of who or what the lecturer Is, and 
is driven to introduce him by saying: 

"Our lecturer of the evening is widely recog- 
nised as one of the greatest authorities on, — 
on, — on his subject in the world to-day. He 
comes to us from, — from a great distance and 
I can assure him that it is a great pleasure to 
this audience to welcome a man who has done 
so much to, — to, — to advance the interests of, 
— of, — of everything as he has." 

But this man, bad as he is, is not so bad as 
the chairman whose preparation for introducing 
the speaker has obviously been made at the 
eleventh hour. Just such a chairman it was my 

205 



My Discovery of England 



fate to strike in the form of a local alderman, 
built like an ox, In one of those small manufac- 
turing places in the north of England where 
they grow men of this type and elect them into 
office. 

"I never saw the lecturer before," he said, 
*'but I've read his book." (I have written nine- 
teen books.) "The committee was good 
enough to send me over his book last night. I 
didn't read it all but I took a look at the pref- 
ace and I can assure him that he Is very wel- 
come. I understand he comes from a college. 
..." Then he turned directly towards me 
and said in a loud voice, "What was the name 
of that college over there you said you came 
from?" 

"McGill," I answered equally loudly. 

"He comes from McGIU," the chairman 
boomed out. "I never heard of McGIll myself 
but I can assure him he's welcome. He's going 
to lecture to us on, — what did you say it was to 
be about?" 

"It's a humorous lecture," I said. 

"Ay, It's to be a humorous lecture, ladles 

206 



'We Have with Us To-nigh f^ 

and gentlemen, and I'll venture to say it will be 
a rare treat. I'm only sorry I can't stay for it 
myself as I have to get back over to the Town 
Hall for a meeting. So without more ado I'll 
get off the platform and let the lecturer go on 
with his humour." 

A still more terrible type of chairman is one 
whose mind is evidently preoccupied and dis- 
turbed with some local happening and who 
comes on to the platform with a face imprinted 
with distress. Before introducing the lecturer 
he refers in moving tones to the local sorrow, 
whatever it is. As a prelude to a humorous 
lecture this is not gay. 

Such a chairman fell to my lot one night be- 
fore a gloomy audience in a London suburb. 

*'As I look about this hall to-night," he began 
in a doleful whine, "I see many empty seats." 
Here he stifled a sob. *'Nor am I surprised 
that a great many of our people should prefer 
to-night to stay quietly at home — " 

I had no clue to what he meant. I merely 
gathered that some particular sorrow must have 
overwhelmed the town that day. 

207 



My Discovery of England 



"To many it may seem hardly fitting that 
after the loss our town has sustained we should 
come out here to listen to a humorous lec- 
ture, — " 

"What's the trouble?'' I whispered to a citi- 
zen sitting beside me on the platform. 

"Our oldest resident" — he whispered back 
■ — "he died this morning." 

"How old?" 
Ninety-four," he whispered. 

Meantime the chairman, with deep sobs in 
his voice, continued : 

"We debated In our committee whether or 
not we should have the lecture. Had It been a 
lecture of another character our position would 
have been less difficult, — " 

By this time I began to feel like a criminal. 

"The case would have been different had the 
lecture been one that contained Information, or 
that was inspired by some serious purpose, or 
that could have been of any benefit. But this 
Is not so. We understand that this lecture 
which Mr. Leacock has already given, I believe, 
twenty or thirty times in England, — " 

208 



"We Have with Us To-nighf' 

Here he turned to me with a look of mild re- 
proval while the silent audience, deeply moved, 
all looked at me as at a man who went around 
the country insulting the memory of the dead 
by giving a lecture thirty times. 

"We understand, though this we shall 
have an opportunity of testing for ourselves 
presently, that Mr. Leacock's lecture is not of 
a character which, — -has not, so to speak, the 
kind of value, — in short. Is not a lecture of that 
class." 

Here he paused and choked back a sob. 

*'Had our poor friend been spared to us for 
another six years he would have rounded out 
the century. But it was not to be. For two or 
three years past he has noted that somehow his 
strength was failing, that, for some reason or 
other, he was no longer what he had been. 
Last month he began to droop. Last week he 
began to sink. Speech left him last Tuesday. 
This morning he passed, and he has gone now, 
we trust, in safety to where there are no lec- 
tures." 

The audience were now nearly in tears. 

209 



My Discovery of England 



The chairman made a visible effort towards 
firmness and control. 

"But yet," he continued, "our committee felt 
that In another sense it was our duty to go on 
with our arrangements. I think, ladies and 
gentlemen, that the war has taught us all that 
It Is always our duty to 'carry on,' no matter 
how hard it may be, no matter with what re- 
luctance we do it, and whatever be the difficul- 
ties and the dangers, we must carry on to the 
end: for after all there Is an end and by resolu- 
tion and patience we can reach it. 

"I will, therefore, Invite Mr. Leacock to de- 
liver to us his humorous lecture, the title of 
which I have forgotten, but I understand It to 
be the same lecture which he has already given 
thirty or forty times In England." 

But contrast with this melancholy man the 
genial and pleasing person who Introduced me, 
all upside down, to a metropolitan audience. 

He was so brisk, so neat, so sure of himself 
that It didn't seem possible that he could make 
any kind of a mistake. I thought It unnecessary 
to coach him. He seemed absolutely all right. 

210 



''We Have with Us To-night" 

"It is a great pleasure," — he said, with a 
charming, easy appearance of being entirely at 
home on the platform, — *'to welcome here to- 
night our distinguished Canadian fellow citizen, 
Mr. Learoyd" — he turned half way towards me 
as he spoke with a sort of gesture of welcome, 
admirably executed. If only my name had been 
Learoyd instead of Leacock it would have been 
excellent. 

"There are many of us," he continued, 
"who have awaited Mr. Learoyd's coming with 
the most pleasant anticipations. We seemed 
from his books to know him already as an old 
friend. In fact I think I do not exaggerate 
when I tell Mr. Learoyd that his name in our 
city has long been a household word. I have 
very, very great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, 
in introducing to you Mr. Learoyd." 

As far as I know that chairman never knew 
his error. At the close of my lecture he said 
that he was sure that the audience "were deeply 
indebted to Mr. Learoyd," and then with a few 
words of rapid, genial apology buzzed off, like 
a humming bird, to other avocations. But I 

211 



My Discovery of England 



have amply forgiven him : anything for kindness 
and genlahty ; it makes the whole of life smooth. 
If that chairman ever comes to my home town 
he is hereby invited to lunch or dine with me, 
as Mr. Learoyd or under any name that he se- 
lects. 

Such a man Is, after all, in sharp contrast to 
the kind of chairman who has no native sense of 
the geniality that ought to accompany his office. 
There is, for example, a type of man who thinks 
that the fitting way to introduce a lecturer Is to 
say a few words about the finances of the society 
to which he Is to lecture (for money) and about 
the difficulty of getting members to turn out 
to hear lectures. 

Everybody has heard such a speech a dozen 
times. But it is the paid lecturer sitting on the 
platform who best appreciates It. It runs like 
this: 

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, before I invite 
the lecturer of the evening to address us there 
are a few words that I would like to say. 
There are a good many members who are In 
arrears with their fees. I am aware that these 

212 



''We Have with Us To-night" 

are hard times and it is difficult to collect money 
but at the same time the members ought to re- 
member that the expenses of the society are 
very heavy. The fees that are asked by the lec- 
turers, as I suppose you know, have advanced 
very greatly in the last few years. In fact I 
may say that they are becoming almost prohibi- 
tive.'» 

This discourse is pleasant hearing for the 
lecturer. He can see the members who have 
not yet paid their annual dues eyeing him with 
hatred. The chairman goes on: 

"Our finance committee were afraid at first 
that we could not afford to bring Mr. Leacock 
to our society. But fortunately through the 
personal generosity of two of our members who 
subscribed ten pounds each out of their own 
pocket we are able to raise the required sum.'' 

{Applause: during which the lecturer sits 
looking and feeling like the embodiment of the 
*Wequired sum/') 

"Now, ladies and gentlemen,'* continues the 
chairman, "what I feel Is that when we have 
members in the society who are willing to make 

213 



My Discovery of England 



this sacrifice, — -because it is a sacrifice, ladies 
and gentlemen, — ^we ought to support them in 
every way. The members ought to think it 
their duty to turn out to the lectures. I know 
that it is not an easy thing to do. On a cold 
night, like this evening, it is hard, I admit it is 
hard, to turn out from the comfort of one's 
own fireside and come and listen to a lecture. 
But I think that the members should look at it 
not as a matter of personal comfort but as 
a matter of duty towards this society. We 
have managed to keep this society alive for 
fifteen years and, though I don't say it in any 
spirit of boasting, it has not been an easy thing 
to do. It has required a good deal of pretty 
hard spade work by the committee. Well, 
ladies and gentlemen, I suppose you didn't 
come here to listen to me and perhaps I have 
said enough about our diflicultles and trou- 
bles. So without more ado (this is always a 
favourite phrase with chairmen) I'll invite Mr. 
Leacock to address the society, — oh, just a 
word before I sit down. Will all those who 
are leaving before the end of the lecture kindly 

214 



''We Have with Us To-nighf 

go out through the side door and step as quietly 
as possible? Mr. Leacock." 

Anybody who is in the lecture business knows 
that that introduction is far worse than being 
called Mr. Learoyd. 

When any lecturer goes across to England 
from this side of the water there is naturally a 
tendency on the part of the chairman to play 
upon this fact. This is especially true In the 
case of a Canadian like myself. *The chairman 
feels that the moment is fitting for one of those 
great imperial thoughts that bind the British 
Empire together. But sometimes the expres- 
sion of the thought falls short of the full glory 
of the conception. 

Witness this (word for word) introduction 
that was used against me by a clerical chairman 
In a quiet spot in the south of England : 

*'Not so long ago, ladies and gentlemen," 
said the vicar, "we used to send out to Canada 
various classes of our community to help build 
up that country. We sent out our labourers, 
we sent out our scholars and professors. In- 
deed we even sent out our criminals. And now," 

215 



My Discovery of England 



with a wave of his hand towards me, "they are 
coming back." 

There was no laughter. An English audience 
is nothing if not literal; and they are as polite 
as they are literal. They understood that I 
was a reformed criminal and as such they gave 
me a hearty burst of applause. 

But there is just one thing that I would like 
to chronicle here in favour of the chairman and 
in gratitude for his assistance. Even at his 
worst he is far better than having no chairman 
at all. Over in England a great many societies 
and public bodies have adopted the plan of 
"cutting out the chairman." Wearying of his 
faults, they have forgotten the reasons for his 
existence and undertaken to do without him. 

The result is ghastly. The lecturer steps 
up on to the platform alone and unaccompanied. 
There is a feeble ripple of applause; he makes 
his miserable bow and explains with as much en- 
thusiasm as he can who he is. The atmosphere 
of the thing is so cold that an Arctic expedition 
isn't in it with it. I found also the further dif- 
ficulty that in the absence of the chairman very 

216 



We Have with Us To-night 



often the audience, or a large part of it, doesn't 
know who the lecturer is. On many occasions 
I received on appearing a wild burst of ap- 
plause under the impression that I was some- 
body else. I have been mistaken in this way for 
Mr. Briand, then Prime Minister of France, 
for Charlie Chaplin, for Mrs. Asquith, — ^but 
stop, I may get into a libel suit. All I mean is 
that without a chairman "we celebrities" get 
terribly mixed up together. 

To one experience of my tour as a lecturer 
I shall always be able to look back with satis- 
faction. I nearly had the pleasure of killing a 
man with laughing: and this in the most literal 
sense. American lecturers have often dreamed 
of doing this. I nearly did it. The man in 
question was a comfortable apoplectic-looking 
man with the kind of merry rubicund face that 
is seen in countries where they don't have pro- 
hibition. He was seated near the back of the 
hall and was laughing uproariously. All of a 
sudden I realised that something was happen- 
ing. The man had collapsed sideways on to the 
floor; a little group of men gathered about him; 

217 



My Discovery of England 



they lifted him up and I could see them carrying 
him out, a silent and inert mass. As in duty 
bound I went right on with my lecture. But my 
heart beat high with satisfaction. I was sure 
that I had killed him. The reader may judge 
how high these hopes rose when a moment or 
two later a note was handed to the chairman 
who then asked me to pause for a moment in 
my lecture and stood up and asked, "Is there a 
doctor in the audience?" A doctor rose and 
silently went out. The lecture continued; but 
there was no more laughter; my aim had now 
become to kill another of them and they knew 
it. They were aware that if they started laugh- 
ing they might die. In a few minutes a second 
note was handed to the chairman. He an- 
nounced very gravely, "A second doctor is 
wanted." The lecture went on In deeper silence 
than ever. All the audience were waiting for a 
third announcement. It came. A new message 
was handed to the chairman. He rose and said, 
"If Mr. Murchison, the undertaker, is in the 
audience, will he kindly step outside." 

That man, I regret to say, got well. Dis- 

218 



''We Have with Us To-nighf 

appointing though it is to read it, he recovered. 
I sent back next morning from London a tele- 
gram of enquiry (I did it in reality so as to 
have a proper proof of his death) and received 
the answer, "Patient doing well ; is sitting up in 
bed and reading Lord Haldane's Relativity; no 
danger of relapse." 



219 



HAVE THE ENGLISH ANY SENSE 
OF HUMOUR? 



X. — Have the English any Sense 
of Humour? 

IT was understood that the main object of 
my trip to England was to find out whether 
the British people have any sense of hu- 
mour. No doubt the Geographical Society 
had this Investigation In mind In not paying my 
expenses. Certainly on my return I was at once 
assailed with the question on all sides, "Have 
they got a sense of humour? Even if It is only 
a rudimentary sense, have they got it or have 
they not?" I propose therefore to address 
myself to the answer to this question. 

A peculiar interest always attaches to hu- 
mour. There is no quality of the human mind 
about which Its possessor is more sensitive than 
the sense of humour. A man will freely con- 
fess that he has no ear for music, or no taste 
for fiction, or even no interest in religion. But 

223 



My Discovery of England 



I have yet to see the man who announces that 
he has no sense of humour. In point of fact, 
every man is apt to think himself possessed of 
an exceptional gift in this direction, and that 
even if his humour does not express itself In 
the power either to make a joke or to laugh at 
one, It none the less consists in a peculiar in- 
sight or inner light superior to that of other 
people. 

The same thing is true of nations. Each 
thinks its own humour of an entirely superior 
kind, and either refuses to admit, or admits re- 
luctantly, the humorous quality of other peo- 
ples. The Englishman may credit the French- 
man with a certain light effervescence of mind 
which he neither emulates nor envies; the 
Frenchman may acknowledge that English liter- 
ature shows here and there a sort of heavy 
playfulness ; but neither of them would consider 
that the humour of the other nation could stand 
a moment's comparison with his own. 

Yet, oddly enough, American humour stands 
as a conspicuous exception to this general rule. 
A certain vogue clings to it. Ever since the 

224 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

spacious days of Artemus Ward and Mark 
Twain it has enjoyed an extraordinary reputa- 
tion, and this not only on our own continent, 
but in England. It was in a sense the English 
who ^'discovered'' Mark Twain; I mean it was 
they who first clearly recognised him as a man 
of letters of the foremost rank, at a time when 
academic Boston still tried to explain him away 
as a mere comic man of the West. In the same 
way Artemus Ward is still held in affectionate 
remembrance In London, and, of the later gen- 
eration, Mr. Dooley at least is a household 
word. 

This Is so much the case that a sort of legend 
has grown around American humour. It is pre- 
sumed to be a superior article and to enjoy the 
same kind of pre-eminence as French cooking, 
the Russian ballet, and Italian organ grinding. 
With this goes the converse supposition that the 
British people are inferior in humour, that a 
joke reaches them only with great difficulty, 
and that a British audience listens to humour in 
gloomy and unintelligent silence. People still 
love to repeat the famous story of how John 

225 



My Discovery of England 



Bright listened attentively to Artemus Ward's 
lecture in London and then said, gravely, that 
he "doubted many of the young man's state- 
ments"; and readers still remember Mark 
Twain's famous parody of the discussion of his 
book by a wooden-headed reviewer of an Eng- 
lish review. 

But the legend in reality is only a legend. If 
the English are inferior to Americans in hu- 
mour, I, for one, am at a loss to see where it 
comes in. If there is anything on our continent 
superior in humour to Punch I should like to see 
it. If we have any more humorous writers in 
our midst than E. V. Lucas and Charles Graves 
and Owen Seaman I should like to read what 
they write; and if there is any audience capable 
of more laughter and more generous apprecia- 
tion than an audience in London, or Bristol, or 
Aberdeen, I should like to lecture to it. 

During my voyage of discovery in Great 
Britain I had very exceptional opportunities for 
testing the truth of these comparisons. It was 
my good fortune to appear as an avowed hu- 
mourist in all the great British cities. I lec- 

226 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

tured as far north as Aberdeen and as far south 
as Brighton and Bournemouth; I travelled east- 
ward to Ipswich and westward Into Wales. I 
spoke on serious subjects, but with a joke or 
two in loco, at the universities, at business gath- 
erings, and at London dinners; I watched, lost 
in admiration, the inspired merriment of the 
Savages of Adelphi Terrace, and in my mo- 
ments of leisure I observed, with a scientific eye, 
the gaieties of the London revues. As a result 
of which I say with conviction that, speaking 
by and large, the two communities are on the 
same level. A Harvard audience, as I have 
reason gratefully to acknowledge, is wonderful. 
But an Oxford audience is just as good. A 
gathering of business men in a textile town in 
the Midlands is just as heavy as a gathering of 
business men in Decatur, Indiana, but no heav- 
ier; and an audience of English schoolboys as 
at Rugby or at Clifton is capable of a wild and 
sustained merriment not to be outdone from 
Halifax to Los Angeles. 

There is, however, one vital difference be- 
tween American and English audiences which 

227 



My Discovery of England 



would be apt to discourage at the outset any 
American lecturer who might go to England. 
The English audiences, from the nature of the 
way In which they have been brought together, 
expect more. In England they still associate lec- 
tures with Information. We don't. Our Amer- 
ican lecture audiences are, In nine cases out of 
ten, organised by a woman's club of some kind 
and drawn not from the working class, but from 
* — what shall we call It? — the class that doesn't 
have to work, or, at any rate, not too hard. It 
Is largely a social audience, well educated with- 
out being * 'highbrow," and tolerant and kindly 
to a degree. In fact, what the people mainly 
want Is to see the lecturer. They have heard 
all about G. K. Chesterton and Hugh Walpole 
and John Drinkwater, and so when these gentle- 
men come to town the woman's club want to 
have a look at them, just as the English people, 
who are all crazy about animals, flock to the 
zoo to look at a new giraffe. They don't expect 
the giraffe to do anything In particular. They 
want to see It, that's all. So with the American 
woman's club audience. After they have seen 

228 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

Mr. Chesterton they ask one another as they 
come out — just as an incidental matter — "Did 
you understand his lecture?" and the answer is, 
"I can't say I did." But there is no malice 
about it. They can now go and say that they 
have seen Mr. Chesterton; that's worth two 
dollars in itself. The nearest thing to this atti- 
tude of mind that I heard of in England was 
at the City Temple in London, where they have 
every week a huge gathering of about two thou- 
sand people, to listen to a (so-called) popular 
lecture. When I was there I was told that the 
person who had preceded me was Lord Hal- 
dane, who had lectured on Einstein's Theory of 
Relativity. I said to the chairman, "Surely this 
kind of audience couldn't understand a lecture 
like that !" He shook his head. "No," he said, 
^'they didn't understand it, but they all enjoyed 

itr 

I don't mean to imply by what I said above 
that American lecture audiences do not appre- 
ciate good things or that the English lecturers 
who come to this continent are all giraffes. On 
the contrary : when the audience finds that Ches- 

229 



My Discovery of England 



terton and Walpole and Drinkwater, in addi- 
tion to being visible ^ are also singularly interest- 
ing lecturers, they are all the better pleased. 
But this doesn't alter the fact that they have 
come primarily to see the lecturer. 

Not so in England. Here a lecture (outside 
London) is organised on a much sterner foot- 
ing. The people are there for information. 
The lecture is organised not by idle, amiable, 
charming women, but by a body called, with 
variations, the Philosophical Society. From ex- 
perience I should define an English Philosophi- 
cal Society as all the people in town who don't 
know anything about philosophy. The aca- 
demic and university classes are never there. 
The audience is only of plainer folk. In the 
United States and Canada at any evening lec- 
ture a large sprinkling of the audience are In 
evening dress. At an English lecture (outside 
of London) none of them are; philosophy is 
not to be wooed in such a garb. Nor are 
there the same commodious premises, the same 
bright lights, and the same atmosphere of 
gaiety as at a society lecture in America. On 

230 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

the contrary, the setting is a gloomy one. In 
England, in winter, night begins at four In the 
afternoon. In the manufacturing towns of the 
Midlands and the north (which Is where the 
philosophical societies flourish) there Is always 
a drizzling rain and wet slop underfoot, a be- 
draggled poverty In the streets, and a dimness 
of lights that contrasts with the glare of light 
in an American town. There Is no visible sign 
In the town that a lecture Is to happen, no plac- 
ards, no advertisements, nothing. The lec- 
turer Is conducted by a chairman through a side 
door In a dingy building (The Institute, estab- 
lished 1840) , and then all of a sudden In a huge, 
dim hall — there sits the Philosophical Society. 
There are a thousand of them, but they sit as 
quiet as a prayer meeting. They are waiting 
to be fed — on Information. 

Now I don't mean to say that the Philosophi- 
cal Society are not a good audience. In their 
own way they're all right. Once the Philosophi- 
cal Society has decided that a lecture Is humor- 
ous they do not stint their laughter. I have had 
many times the satisfaction of seeing a Phllo- 

231 



My Discovery of England 



sophlcal Society swept away from Its moorings 
and tossing in a sea of laughter, as generous 
and as whole-hearted as anything we ever see in 
America. 

But they are not so willing to begin. With 
us the chairman has only to say to the gaily 
dressed members of the Ladles' Fortnightly 
Club, "Well, ladles, I'm sure we are all looking 
forward very much to Mr. Walpole's lecture," 
and at once there is a ripple of applause, and a 
responsive expression on a hundred charming 
faces. 

Not so the Philosophical Society of the Mid- 
lands. The chairman rises. He doesn't call 
for silence. It is there, thick. "We have with 
us to-night," he says, "a man whose name is 
well known to the Philosophical Society" {here 
he looks at his card) , "Mr. Stephen Leacock." 
{Complete silence,) "He is a professor of 
political economy at — " Here he turns to me 
and says, "Which college did you say?" I an- 
swer quite audibly in the silence, "At McGIlL" 
"He is at McGIll," says the chairman. {More 
silence.) "I don't suppose, however, ladles and 

232 



Have English Any Sense of Humov/r? 

gentlemen, that he's come here to talk about 
political economy." This is meant as a jest, but 
the audience takes it as a threat. "However, 
ladies and gentlemen, you haven't come here to 
listen to me" (this evokes applause, the first of 
the evening)^ "so without more ado" {the man 
always has the impression that there's been a 
lot of **adOy* hut I never see any of it) "I'll now 
introduce Mr. Leacock." {Complete silence.) 
Nothing of which means the least harm. It 
only implies that the Philosophical Society are 
true philosophers in accepting nothing un- 
proved. They are like the man from Missouri. 
They want to be shown. And undoubtedly it 
takes a little time, therefore, to rouse them. I 
remember listening with great interest to Sir 
Michael Sadler, who is possessed of a very neat 
wit, introducing me at Leeds. He threw three 
jokes, one after the other, into the heart of a 
huge, silent audience without effect. He might 
as well have thrown soap bubbles. But the 
fourth joke broke fair and square like a bomb 
in the middle of the Philosophical Society and 
exploded them into convulsions. The process 

233 



My Discovery of England 



IS very like what artillery men tell of "bracket- 
ing" the object fired at, and then landing fairly 
on it. 

In what I have just written about audiences 
I have purposely been using the word English 
and not British, for it does not in the least apply 
to the Scotch. There is, for a humorous lec- 
turer, no better audience in the world than a 
Scotch audience. The old standing joke about 
the Scotch sense of humour is mere nonsense. 
Yet one finds it everywhere. 

"So you're going to try to take humour up to 
Scotland," the most eminent author in England 
said to me. "Well, the Lord help you. You'd 
better take an axe with you to open their skulls ; 
there is no other way." How this legend 
started I don't know, but I think it is because 
the English are jealous of the Scotch. They 
got into the Union with them in 1707 and they 
can't get out. The Scotch don't want Home 
Rule, or Swa Raj, or Dominion status, or any- 
thing; they just want the English. When they 
want money they go to London and make it; if 
they want literary fame they sell their books to 

234 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

the English; and to prevent any kind of political 
trouble they take care to keep the Cabinet well 
filled with Scotchmen. The English for shame's 
sake can't get out of the Union, so they 
retaliate by saying that the Scotch have no 
sense of humour. But there's nothing in it. 
One has only to ask any of the theatrical peo- 
ple and they will tell you that the audiences in 
Glasgow and Edinburgh are the best In the 
British Isles — possess the best taste and the 
best ability to recognise what is really good. 

The reason for this lies, I think, in the well- 
known fact that the Scotch are a truly educated 
people, not educated In the mere sense of hav- 
ing been made to go to school, but in the higher 
sense of having acquired an Interest in books 
and a respect for learning. In England the 
higher classes alone possess this, the working 
class as a whole know nothing of It. But 
in Scotland the attitude Is universal. And the 
more I reflect upon the subject, the more I be- 
lieve that what counts most in the appreciation 
of humour Is not nationality, but the degree 
of education enjoyed by the Individual con- 

235 



My Discovery of England 



cerned. I do not think that there is any doubt 
that educated people possess a far wider range 
of humour than the uneducated class. Some 
people, of course, get overeducated and become 
hopelessly academic. The word "highbrow" 
has been invented exactly to fit the case. The 
sense of humour In the highbrow has become 
atrophied, or, to vary the metaphor, it Is sub- 
merged or buried under the accumulated strata 
of his education, on the top soil of which flour- 
ishes a fine growth of conceit. But even In the 
highbrow the educated appreciation of humour 
Is there — away down. Generally, if one at- 
tempts to amuse a highbrow he will resent it 
as if the process were beneath him; or perhaps 
the intellectual jealousy and touchiness with 
which he Is always overcharged will lead him to 
retaliate with a pointless story from Plato. But 
If the highbrow is right off his guard and has 
no jealousy in his mind, you may find him roar- 
ing with laughter and wiping his spectacles, 
with his sides shaking, and see him converted 
as by magic Into the merry, clever little school- 

236 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

boy that he was thirty years ago, before his 
education ossified him. 

But with the illiterate and the rustic no such 
process is possible. His sense of humour may 
be there as a sense, but the mechanism for set- 
ting it in operation is limited and rudimentary. 
Only the broadest and most elementary forms 
of joke can reach him. The magnificent mech- 
anism of the art of words is, quite literally, a 
sealed book to him. Here and there, indeed, 
a form of fun is found so elementary in its 
nature and yet so excellent in execution that it 
appeals to all alike, to the illiterate and to the 
highbrow, to the peasant and the professor. 
Such, for example, are the antics of Mr. Charles 
Chaplin or the depiction of Mr. Jiggs by the 
pencil of George McManus. But such cases 
are rare. As a rule the cheap fun that excites 
the rustic to laughter is execrable to the man of 
education. 

In the light of what I have said before it fol- 
lows that the individuals that are findable in 
every English or American audience are much 

237 



My Discovery of England 



the same. All those who lecture or act are well 
aware that there are certain types of people 
that are always to be seen somewhere in the 
hall. Some of these belong to the general 
class of discouraging people. They listen in 
stolid silence. No light of intelligence ever 
gleams on their faces; no response comes from 
their eyes. 

I find, for example, that wherever I go there 
is always seated in the audience, about three 
seats from the front, a silent man with a big 
motionless face like a melon. He is always 
there. I have seen that man in every town or 
city from Richmond, Indiana, to Bournemouth 
in Hampshire. He haunts me. I get to ex- 
pect him. I feel like nodding to him from the 
platform. And I find that all other lecturers 
have the same experience. Wherever they go 
the man with the big face is always there. He 
never laughs; no matter if the people all round 
him are convulsed with laughter, he sits there 
like a rock — or, no, like a toad — immovable. 
What he thinks I don't know. Why he comes 
to lectures I cannot guess. Once, and once 

238 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

-only, I spoke to him, or, rather, he spoke to me. 
I was coming out from the lecture and found 
myself close to him in the corridor. It had 
been a rather gloomy evening; the audience had 
hardly laughed at all; and I know nothing sad- 
der than a humorous lecture without laughter. 
The man with the big face, finding himself be- 
side me, turned and said, "Some of them peo- 
ple weren't getting that to-night." His tone 
of sympathy seemed to imply that he had got it 
all himself; if so, he must have swallowed it 
whole without a sign. But I have since thought 
that this man with the big face may have his 
own internal form of appreciation. This much, 
however, I know: to look at him from the 
platform is fatal. One sustained look into his 
big, motionless face and the lecturer would be 
lost; inspiration would die upon one's lips — 
the basilisk isn't in it with him. 

Personally, I no sooner see the man with the 
big face than instinctively I turn my eyes away, 
I look round the hall for another man that I 
know is always there, the opposite type, the 
little man with the spectacles. There he sits, 

239 



My Discovery of England 



good soul, about twelve rows back, his large 
spectacles beaming with appreciation and his 
quick face anticipating every point. I imag- 
ine him to be by trade a minor journalist or him- 
self a writer of sorts, but with not enough of 
success to have spoiled him. 

There are other people always there, too. 
There is the old lady who thinks the lecture 
improper; It doesn^t matter how moral it is, 
she's out for impropriety and she can find It 
anywhere. Then there is another very terrible 
man against whom all American lecturers In 
England should be warned — ^the man who is 
leaving on the 9 P.M. train. English rail- 
ways running into suburbs and near-by towns 
have a schedule which is expressly arranged 
to have the principal train leave before the lec- 
ture ends. Hence the 9-P.M.-train man. He 
sits right near the front, and at ten minutes to 
nine he gathers up his hat, coat, and umbrella 
very deliberately, rises with great calm, and 
walks firmly away. His air Is that of a man 
who has stood all that he can and can bear no 
more. Till one knows about this man, and 

240 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

the others who rise after him, it is very dis- 
concerting; at first I thought I must have said 
something to reflect upon the royal family. 
But presently the lecturer gets to understand 
that it is only the nine-o'clock train and that all 
the audience know about it. Then it's all right. 
It's just like the people rising and stretching 
themselves after the seventh innings in base- 
ball. 

In all that goes above I have been empha- 
sising the fact that the British and the Ameri- 
can sense of humour are essentially the same 
thing. But there are, of course, peculiar dif- 
ferences of form and peculiar preferences of 
material that often make them seem to diverge 
widely. 

By this I mean that each community has, 
within limits, its own particular ways of be- 
ing funny and its own particular conception 
of a joke. Thus, a Scotchman likes best a 
joke which he has all to himself or which he 
shares reluctantly with a few; the thing is too 
rich to distribute. The American loves par- 
ticularly as his line of joke an anecdote with 

241 



My Discovery of England 



the point all concentrated at the end and ex- 
ploding in a phrase. The Englishman loves 
best as his joke the narration of something that 
actually did happen and that depends, of course, 
for its point on its reality. 

There are plenty of minor differences, too, 
in point of mere form, and very naturally each 
community finds the particular form used by 
the others less pleasing than its own. In fact, 
for this very reason each people is apt to think 
its own humour the best. 

Thus, on our side of the Atlantic, to cite our 
own faults first, we still cling to the supposed 
humour of bad spelling. We have, indeed, 
told ourselves a thousand times over that bad 
spelling is not funny, but is very tiresome. Yet 
it is no sooner laid aside and buried than it 
gets resurrected. I suppose the real reason 
is that it is funny, at least to our eyes. When 
Bill Nye spells wife with * yph" we can't help 
being amused. Now Bill Nye's bad spelling 
had absolutely no point to it except its oddity. 
At times it was extremely funny, but as a mode 
it led easily to widespread and pointless imi- 

242 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

tation. It was the kind of thing — like poetry 
— that anybody can do badly. It was most 
deservedly abandoned with execration. No 
American editor would print it to-day. But 
witness the new and excellent effect produced 
with bad spelKng by Mr. Ring W. Lardner. 
Here, however, the case is altered; it is not the 
falseness of Mr. Lardner's spelling that is the 
amusing feature of it, but the truth of it. 
When he writes, *^dear friend^ Al, I would of 
rote sooner y^ etc., he is truer to actual sound 
and intonation than the lexicon. The mode is 
excellent. But the imitations will soon debase 
it into such bad coin that it will fail to pass cur- 
rent. In England, however, the humour of bad 
spelling does not and has never, I believe, flour- 
ished. Bad spelling is only used in England 
as an attempt to reproduce phonetically a dia- 
lect; it is not intended that the spelling itself 
should be thought funny, but the dialect that it 
represents. But the effect, on the whole, is tire- 
some. A little dose of the humour of Lanca- 
shire or Somerset or Yorkshire pronunciation 
may be all right, but a whole page of it looks 

243 



My Discovery of England 



like the gibbering of chimpanzees set down on 
paper. 

In America also we run perpetually to the 
(supposed) humour of slang, a form not used 
in England. If we were to analyse what we 
mean by slang I think it would be found to con- 
sist of the Introduction of new metaphors or 
new forms of language of a metaphorical char- 
acter, strained almost to the breaking point. 
Sometimes we do it with a single word. When 
some genius discovers that a "hat" Is really 
only "a lid" placed on top of a human being, 
straightway the word "lid" goes rippling over 
the continent. Similarly a woman becomes a 
"skirt," and so on ad infinitum. 

These words presently either disappear or 
else retain a permanent place, being slang no 
longer. No doubt half our words, If not all 
of them, were once slang. Even within our 
own memory we can see the whole process car- 
ried through; "cinch" once sounded funny; it 
is now standard American-English. But other 
slang Is made up of descriptive phrases. At 
the best, these slang phrases are — at least we 

244 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

think they are — extremely funny. But they 
are funniest when newly coined, and It takes a 
master hand to coin them well. For a supreme 
example of wild vagaries of language used for 
humour, one might take O. Henry's '^Gentle 
Grafter." But here the imitation Is as easy as 
it Is tiresome. The invention of pointless slang 
phrases without real suggestion or merit is one 
of our most familiar forms of factory-made 
humour. Now the English people are apt to 
turn away from the whole field of slang. In 
the first place it puzzles them — they don't know 
whether each particular word or phrase Is a sort 
of idiom already known to Americans, or some- 
thing (as with O. Henry) never said before 
and to be analysed for its own sake. The re- 
sult Is that with the English public the great 
mass of American slang writing (genius apart) 
doesn't go. I have even found English people 
of undoubted literary taste repelled from such 
a master as O. Henry (now read by millions 
in England) because at first sight they get 
the impression that it is **all American 
slang." 

245 



My Discovery of England 



Another point in which American humour, 
or at least the form which it takes, differs not- 
ably from British, is in the matter of story tell- 
ing. It was a great surprise to me the first 
time I went out to a dinner party in London 
to find that my host did not open the dinner 
by telling a funny story; that the guests did not 
then sit silent trying to "think of another"; 
that some one did not presently break silence 
by saying, "I heard a good one the other day,'* 
— and so forth. And I realised that in this 
respect English society is luckier than 
ours. 

It is my candid opinion that no man ought 
to be allowed to tell a funny story or anecdote 
without a license. We insist rightly enough 
that every taxi-driver must have a license, and 
the same principle should apply to anybody 
who proposes to act as a raconteur. Telling 
a story is a difiicult thing — quite as difficult as 
driving a taxi. And the risks of failure and 
accident and the unfortunate consequences of 
such to the public, if not exactly identical, are, 
at any rate, analogous. 

246 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

This is a point of view not generally appre- 
ciated. A man is apt to think that just be- 
cause he has heard a good story he is able and 
entitled to repeat it. He might as well under- 
take to do a snake dance merely because he has 
seen Madame Pavlowa do one. The point of 
a story is apt to lie in the telling, or at least to 
depend upon it In a high degree. Certain 
stories, it is true, depend so much on the final 
point, or "nub," as we Americans call it, that 
they are almost fool-proof. But even these 
can be made so prolix and tiresome, can be so 
messed up with irrelevant detail, that the gen- 
eral effect is utter weariness relieved by a kind 
of shock at the end. Let me illustrate what I 
mean by a story with a "nub" or point. I will 
take one of the best known, so as to make no 
claim to originality — for example, the famous 
anecdote of the man who wanted to be "put off 
at Buffalo." Here It Is : 

A man entered a sleeping-car and said to the 
porter, "At what time do we get to Buffalo?" 
The porter answered, "At half-past three In 
the morning, sir." "All right," the man said; 

247 



My Discovery of England 



*'now I want to get off at Buffalo, and I want 
you to see that I get off. I sleep heavily and 
I'm hard to rouse. But you just make me wake 
up, don't mind what I say, don't pay attention 
if I kick about it, just put me of, do you see?" 
"All right, sir," said the porter. The man got 
into his berth and fell fast asleep. He never 
woke or moved till it was broad daylight and 
the train was a hundred miles beyond Buffalo. 
He called angrily to the porter, "See here, you, 
didn't I tell you to put me off at Buffalo ?" The 
porter looked at him, aghast. "Well, I declare 
to goodness, boss!" he exclaimed; "if it wasn't 
you, who was that man that I threw off this 
train at half -past three at Buffalo?** 

Now this story is as nearly fool-proof as can 
be. And yet it is amazing how badly it can be 
messed up by a person with a special gift for 
mangling a story. He does it something after 
this fashion: 

"There was a fellow got on the train one 
night and he had a berth reserved for Buffalo ; 
at least the way I heard it, it was Buffalo, 
though I guess, as a matter of fact, you might 

248 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

tell it on any other town just as well — or no, I 
guess he didn't have his berth reserved, he got 
on the train and asked the porter for a reserva- 
tion for Buffalo — ^or, anyway, that part doesn't 
matter — say that he had a berth for Buffalo or 
any other place, and the porter came through 
and said, 'Do you want an early call?' — or no, 
he went to the porter — that was it — and 
said—" 

But stop. The rest of the story becomes a 
mere painful waiting for the end. 

Of course the higher type of funny story is 
the one that depends for its amusing quality not 
on the final point, or not solely on it, but on the 
wording and the narration all through. This 
is the way in which a story is told by a comedian 
or a person who is a raconteur in the real sense. 
When Sir Harry Lauder narrates an incident, 
the telling of it is funny from beginning to end. 
When some lesser person tries to repeat it 
afterwards, there is nothing left but the final 
point. The rest is weariness. 

As a consequence most story-tellers are 
driven to telling stories that depend on the point 

249 



My Discovery of England 



or "nub" and not on the narration. The story- 
teller gathers these up till he is equipped with 
a sort of little repertory of fun by which he 
hopes to surround himself with social charm. 
In America especially (by which I mean here 
the United States and Canada, but not Mexico) 
we suffer from the story-telling habit. As far 
as I am able to judge, English society is not 
pervaded and damaged by the story-telling habit 
as much as is society in the United States and 
Canada. On our side of the Atlantic story- 
telling at dinners and on every other social occa- 
sion has become a curse. In every phase of 
social and intellectual life one is haunted by the 
funny anecdote. Any one who has ever at- 
tended a Canadian or American banquet will 
recall the solemn way in which the chairman 
rises and says : "Gentlemen, it is to me a very 
great pleasure and a very great honour to pre- 
side at this annual dinner. There was an old 
darky once — " and so forth. When he con- 
cludes he says, "I will now call upon the Rev. 
Dr. Stooge, Head of the Provincial University, 

250 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

to propose the toast 'Our Dominion/ " Dr. 
Stooge rises amid great applause and with great 
solemnity begins, "There were once two Irish- 
men — ** and so on to the end. But in London, 
England, it is apparently not so. Not long 
ago I had the pleasure of meeting at dinner a 
member of the Government. I fully antici- 
pated that as a member of the Government he 
would be expected to tell a funny story about 
an old darky, just as he would on our side of 
the water. In fact, I should have supposed 
that he could hardly get into the Government 
unless he did tell a funny story of some sort. 
But all through dinner the Cabinet Minister 
never said a word about either a Methodist 
minister, or a commercial traveller, or an old 
darky, or two Irishmen, or any of the stock 
characters of the American repertory. On an- 
other occasion I dined with a bishop of the 
Church. I expected that when the soup came 
he would say, ''There was an old darky — " 
After which I should have had to listen with 
rapt attention, and, when he had finished, with- 

251 



My Discovery of England 



out any pause, rejoin, "There were a couple of 
Irishmen once — '* and so on. But the bishop 
never said a word of the sort. 

I can further, for the sake of my fellow-men 
In Canada and the United States who may think 
of going to England, vouchsafe the following 
facts: If you meet a director of the Bank of 
England, he does not say: "I am very glad 
to meet you. Sit down. There was a mule in 
Arkansas once,** etc. How they do their bank- 
ing without that mule I don't know. But they 
manage it. I can certify also that if you meet 
the proprietor of a great newspaper he will not 
begin by saying, "There was a Scotchman once." 
In fact, in England, you can mingle freely in 
general society without being called upon either 
to produce a funny story or to suffer from one. 

I don't mean to deny that the American 
funny story, in capable hands, is amazingly 
funny and that it does brighten up human in- 
tercourse. But the real trouble lies, not in the 
fun of the story, but In the painful waiting for 
the point to come and In the strained and anx- 
ious silence that succeeds It. Each person 

252 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

around the dinner table Is trying to "think of 
another." There is a dreadful pause. The 
hostess puts up a prayer that some one may 
**think of another." Then at last, to the re- 
lief of everybody, some one says: 'T heard a 
story the other day — I don't know whether 
you've heard it — " And the grateful cries of 
*'No! no! go ahead" show how great the 
tension has been. 

Nine times out of ten the people have heard 
the story before; and ten times out of nine the 
teller damages it in the telling. But his hearers 
are grateful to him for having saved them from 
the appalling mantle of silence and introspec- 
tion which had fallen upon the table. For the 
trouble is that when once two or three stories 
have been told It seems to be a point of honour 
not to subside into mere conversation. It seems 
rude, when a story-teller has at last reached the 
triumphant ending and climax of the mule from 
Arkansas, it seems impolite, to follow it up by 
saying, "I see that Germany refuses to pay the 
indemnity." It can't be done. Either the mule 
or the indemnity — one can't have both. 

253 



My Discovery of England 



The English, I say, have not developed the 
American custom of the funny story as a form 
of social intercourse. But I do not mean to 
say that they are sinless in this respect. As I 
see It, they hand round in general conversation 
something nearly as bad in the form of what 
one may call the literal anecdote or personal 
experience. By this I refer to the habit of nar- 
rating some silly little event that has actually 
happened to them or in their sight, which they 
designate as "screamingly funny,'' and which 
was perhaps very funny when it happened but 
which is not the least funny In the telling. The 
American funny story Is Imaginary. It never 
happened. Somebody presumably once made 
It up. It Is fiction. Thus there must once have 
been some great palpitating brain, some glow- 
ing Imagination, which Invented the story of the 
man who was put off at Buffalo. But the Eng- 
lish "screamingly funny" story Is not imaginary. 
It really did happen. It Is an actual personal 
experience. In short, It Is not fiction but his- 
tory. 

I think — If one may say It with all respect — ' 

254 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

that in English society girls and women are 
especially prone to narrate these personal ex- 
periences as contributions to general merriment 
rather than the men. The English girl has a 
sort of traditional idea of being amusing; the 
English man cares less about it. He prefers 
facts to fancy every time, and as a rule is free 
from that desire to pose as a humourist which 
haunts the American mind. So it comes about 
that most of the "screamingly funny^' stones 
are told in English society by the women. 
Thus the counterpart of "put me off at Buf- 
falo" done into English would be something 
like this : "We were so amused the other night 
in the sleeping-car going to Buffalo. There 
was the most amusing old negro making the 
beds, a perfect scream, you know, and he kept 
insisting that if we wanted to get up at Buffalo 
we must all go to bed at nine o'clock. He 
positively wouldn't let us sit up' — I mean to say 
it was killing the way he wanted to put us to 
bed. We all roared!" 

Please note that roar at the end of the Eng- 
lish personal anecdote. It is the sign that in- 

255 



My Discovery of England 



dicates that the story is over. When you are 
assured by the narrators that all the persons 
present "roared" or "simply roared," then 
you can be quite sure that the humorous incident 
is closed and that laughter is in place. 

Now, as a matter of fact, the scene with the 
darky porter may have been, when it really 
happened, most amusing. But not a trace of 
it gets over in the story. There is nothing but 
the bare assertion that it was "screamingly 
funny" or "simply killing." But the English 
are such an honest people that when they say 
this sort of thing they believe one another and 
they laugh. 

But, after all, why should people insist on 
telling funny stories at all? Why not be con- 
tent to buy the works of some really first-class 
humourist and read them aloud in proper hu- 
mility of mind without trying to emulate them? 
Either that or talk theology. 

On my own side of the Atlantic I often mar- 
vel at our extraordinary tolerance and courtesy 
to one another in the matter of story- telling. 
I have never seen a bad story-teller thrown 

2?6 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

forcibly out of the room or even stopped and 
warned; we listen with the most wonderful pa- 
tience to the worst of narration. The story 
Is always without any interest except In the un- 
known point that will be brought in later. But 
this, until It does come, is no more interesting 
than to-morrow's breakfast. Yet for some 
reason or other we permit this story-telling 
habit to invade and damage our whole social 
life. The English always criticise this and 
think they are absolutely right. To my mind 
in their social life they give the "funny story" 
its proper place and room and no more. That 
Is to say — If ten people draw their chairs in 
to the dinner table and somebody really has 
just heard a story and wants to tell It, there is 
no reason against It. If he says, "Oh, by the 
way, I heard a good story to-day," It Is just 
as If he said, "Oh, by the way, I heard a piece 
of news about John Smith." It Is quite ad- 
missible as conversation. But he doesn't sit 
down to try to think, along with nine other rival 
thinkers, of all the stories that he had heard, 
and that makes all the difference. 

257 



My Discovery of England 



The Scotch, by the way, resemble us in lik- 
ing to tell and hear stories. But they have 
their own line. They like the stories to be 
grim, dealing in a jocose way with death and 
funerals. The story begins (will the reader 
kindly turn it into Scotch pronunciation for 
himself), "There was a Sandy MacDonald had 
died and the wife had the body all laid out for 
burial and dressed up very fine in his best suit,^' 
etc. Now for me that beginning is enough. 
To me that is not a story, but a tragedy. I am 
so sorry for Mrs. MacDonald that I can't think 
of anything else. But I think the explanation 
is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout 
people and live so closely within the shadow of 
death itself that they may without irreverence 
or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or 
else, perhaps they don't care a cuss whether 
Sandy MacDonald died or not. Take it either 
way. 

But I am tired of talking of our faults. Let 
me turn to the more pleasing task of discussing 
those of the English. In the first place, and 
as a minor matter of form, I think that English 

258 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

humour suffers from the tolerance afforded to 
the pun. For some reason English people find 
puns funny. We don't. Here and there, no 
doubt, a pun may be made that for some excep- 
tional reason becomes a matter of genuine wit. 
But the great mass of the English puns that dis- 
figure the Press every week are mere pointless 
verbalisms that to the American mind cause 
nothing but weariness. 

But even worse than the use of puns is the 
peculiar pedantry, not to say priggishness, that 
haunts the English expression of humour. To 
make a mistake in a Latin quotation or to stick 
on a wrong ending to a Latin word is not really 
an amusing thing. To an ancient Roman, per- 
haps, it might be. But then we are not an- 
cient Romans; indeed, I imagine that if an 
ancient Roman could be resurrected, all the 
Latin that any of our classical scholars can com- 
mand would be about equivalent to the French 
of a cockney waiter on a Channel steamer. Yet 
one finds even the immortal Punch citing re- 
cently as a very funny thing a newspaper mis- 
quotation of ^^urbis et orhis^* instead of ^^urh't 

259 



My Discovery of England 



et orhoSj* or the other way round. I forget 
which. Perhaps there was some further point 
in it that I didn't see, but, anyway, it wasn't 
funny. Neither is it funny if a person, instead 
of saying Archimedes, says Archimeeds; why 
shouldn't it have been Archimeeds? The Eng- 
lish scale of values in these things is all wrong. 
Very few Englishmen can pronounce Chicago 
properly and they think nothing of that. But 
if a person mispronounces the name of a Greek 
village of what O. Henry called "The Year 
B.C." it is supposed to be excruciatingly funny. 
I think in reality that this is only a part of 
the overdone scholarship that haunts so much 
of English writing — not the best of it, but a 
lot of it. It is too full of allusions and in- 
direct references to all sorts of extraneous facts. 
The English writer finds it hard to say a plain 
thing in a plain way. He is too anxious to 
show in every sentence what a fine scholar he 
is. He carries in his mind an accumulated 
treasure of quotations, allusions, and scraps and 
tags of history, and into this, like Jack Horner, 
he must needs *'stick in his thumb and pull out 

260 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

a plum." Instead of saying, *'It is a fine morn- 
ing," he prefers to write, *'This is a day of 
which one might say with the melancholy 
Jacques, it is a fine morning." 

Hence it is that many plain American read- 
ers find English humour "highbrow." Just as 
the English are apt to find our humour "slangy" 
and "cheap," so we find theirs academic and 
heavy. But the difference, after all, is of far 
less moment than might be supposed. It lies 
only on the surface. Fundamentally, as I said 
in starting, the humour of the two peoples is 
of the same kind and on an equal level. 

There is one form of humour which the Eng- 
lish have more or less to themselves, nor do I 
envy it to them. I mean the merriment that 
they appear able to draw out of the criminal 
courts. To me a criminal court is a place of 
horror, and a murder trial the last word in hu- 
man tragedy. The English criminal courts I 
know only from the newspapers and ask no 
nearer acquaintance. But according to the 
newspapers the courts, especially when a mur- 
der case is on, are enlivened by flashes of ju- 

261 



My Discovery of England 



dicial and legal humour that seem to meet with 
general approval. The current reports in the 
Press run like this : 

*^The prisoner, who is being tried on a charge 
of having burned his wife to death in a furnace, 
was placed in the dock and gave his name as 
Evans. Did he say *Evans or Ovens?' asked 
Mr. Justice Blank. The court broke into a 
roar, in which all joined but the prisoner. . . ." 
Or take this: ''How many years did you say 
you served the last time?" asked the judge. 
**Three," said the prisoner. "Well, twice 
three is six," said the judge, laughing till his 
sides shook; "so I'll give you six years." 

I don't say that those are literal examples of 
the humour of the criminal court. But they 
are close to It. For a judge to joke is as easy 
as it is for a schoolmaster to joke in his class. 
His unhappy audience has no choice but laugh- 
ter. No doubt in point of intellect the Eng- 
lish judges and the bar represent the most 
highly trained product of the British Empire. 
But when It comes to fun, they ought not to 
pit themselves against the unhappy prisoner. 

262 



Have English Any Sense of Humour? 

Why not take a man of their own size? For 
true amusement Mr. Charles Chaplin or Mr. 
Leslie Henson could give them sixty in a hun- 
dred. I even think I could myself. 

One final judgment, however, might with due 
caution be hazarded. I do not think that, on 
the whole, the English are quite as fond of 
humour as we are. I mean they are not so will- 
ing to welcome at all times the humorous point 
of view as we are in America. The English 
are a serious people, with many serious things 
to think of — football, horse racing, dogs, fish, 
and many other concerns that demand much 
national thought: they have so many national 
preoccupations of this kind that they have less 
need for jokes than we have. They have 
higher things to talk about, whereas on our 
side of the water, except when the World's 
Series is being played, we have few, if any, 
truly national topics. 

And yet I know that many people in England 
would exactly reverse this last judgment and 
say that the Americans are a desperately seri- 
ous people. That in a sense is true. Any 

263 



My Discovery of England 



-^ 



American who takes up with an idea such as 
New Thought, Psychoanalysis or Eating Saw- 
dust, or any "uplift" of the kind becomes des- 
perately lopsided in his seriousness, and as a 
very large number of us cultivate New Thought, 
or practise breathing exercises, or eat sawdust, 
no doubt the English visitors think us a des- 
perate lot. 

Anyway, it's an ill business to criticise an- 
other people's shortcomings. What I said at 
the start was that the British are just as hu- 
morous as are the Americans, or the Canadians, 
or any of us across the Atlantic, and for greater 
certainty I repeat it at the end. 



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